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THE ^ 

LIGHT TO THE PATH : 

What the Bible has been to others, and 
tvhat it can do for ourselves. 

BY 

JAMES HAMILTON, D.D., F.L.S. 
1 1 

A NEW EDITION. 



LONDON : 
JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. 

MDCCCLXVI. 



PREFACE. 



Twelve years ago the Author published a 
small volume entitled, " The Lamp and the 
Lantern : or, The Bible a Light to the Tent 
and the Traveller." Appearing at the time 
when the Bible Society was holding its jubilee, 
it contained many things of which the interest 
has passed away, and which are omitted in the 
present edition. Their place is supplied by 
materials which, it is hoped, may possess more 
enduring value ; and the writer takes advan- 
tage of the present opportunity to substitute 
for the original name a title less alliterative. 



48 Euston Squariv 
June i, 1865. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE BIBLE AND THE INQUIRER, . . I 
IT. THE BIBLE AND THE BELIEVER, . . 20 
III. THE BIBLE AND THE INVALID, . . 35 
IV. LESSONS IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE 
— THE CHEQUE AND THE COUNTER- 
FOIL, 40 

V. LESSONS IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE 

— THE MOULD AND THE MEDALLION, 58 
VI. THE MUSTARD SEED ; OR, THE GROWTH 

OF THE GOSPEL, .... 72 

VII. LEAVEN ; OR, THE CIVILISING INFLU- 
ENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, ... 85 
fill. THE LITERARY ATTRACTIONS OF THE 

BIBLE, . . . . . .98 

IX. THE ILLUMINATED BIBLE AND THE 

LIVING EPISTLE, .... 133 

X. HINTS TO THE BIBLE STUDENT, . . 1 48 

INDEX, 169 




CHAPTER I. 

THE BIBLE AND THE INQUIRER. 

A father and a son were on a journey. It 
was late in the afternoon, but still clear day, 
when they came to a cottage by the road-side, 
and the father went in and borrowed a lighted 
lantern. The young man was exceedingly 
amused, and perhaps he was a little vexed. If 
any one should meet them carrying a lamp in 
the sunshine, it would look so absurd ; and 
what in the world was the use of it ? But the 
older traveller took the young man's jibes good- 
humouredly, and only answered, " The night 
cometh." And it did come. They passed no 
more cottages, but they got into a thick forest, 
where the daylight faded so rapidly that the 
lantern already shone a welcome companion. 
Not only was the sun gone down, but the last 
streak of twilight had vanished. It was dread- 
fully dark ; but the good little lantern spread a 



2 The Bible and the Inquh er. 

cloth of gold before the steps of the travellers, 
and did not let one shadow or phantom come 
near them. At last the road divided. " Straight 
on!" cried the youth. " Not so fast," said the 
elder ; for though the path to the right was less 
trodden, perhaps it was the one they should 
take ; when fortunately they espied a finger-post, 
and holding the lamp as high as they could, 
they read the direction, and found that they 
would have gone utterly wrong, had they not 
taken the narrow and neglected footway. Re- 
joicing at their escape, they pushed on merrily ; 
and by and by with his frisky spirits the young- 
ster went ahead, and was far in advance of 
the lantern, when the old man heard a plash 
and a shout, and running up, was just in time 
to help ashore his impetuous boy, who had 
soused into a stagnant pool, and who crawled 
up the bank pale and shivering, with the leeches 
and duckweed clinging to his garments. a You 
see the road was not through this pool, but 
round it. You should walk in the light;" and 
so they again set out together. As the stillness 
deepened, they sometimes heard a rustle in the 
bushy undergrowth, and distant howlings or a 
sharp snarl near-hand warned them that the 
beasts of the forest were abroad ; and once or 
twice they could see a pair of fiery opals glaring 
at them, but as soon as they turned the full 
flame of the lantern in that direction the goblin 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 



3 



retreated. We need not tell the whole adventures 
of the night ; but at last they came to a place 
where a heavy moan arrested them, and search- 
ing in the copse, they found a man stretched on 
the ground and badly hurt. He had either re- 
ceived a blow on the head, or he had inhaled 
some stupifying ether, for at first he talked very 
incoherently. It turned out, that as he had 
been coming along, a gentleman in black had 
prevailed on him to cast his lantern into the 
ditch, and that soon after some footpad had 
knocked him down and dragged him off the road 
and robbed him of all his money. As soon as 
he was somewhat restored, they set him on his 
beast, and journeyed on together. The day was 
breaking, and the forest was thinning off on the 
margin of a magnificent domain. They looked 
forth on vine-clad hills and a shining river ; and 
though the palace itself could be descried but 
dimly, — it was so far up in the dazzling sunrise, 
— they could easily make out many mansions. 
" I am home !" cried the old man ; and the full 
morning was reflected from his face as he added, 
" Mine eyes shall see the king in his beauty ; 
they shall behold the land that is very far off." 
And as he embraced his comrades, he handed 
over the lantern to his son, and said, " Keep 
this as a light unto your feet, and a lamp unto 
your path." The youth prized the keepsake. 
He found constant occasion for it. He brightened 



4 The Bible and the Inquirer. 



up the four windows, by which it sent its light 
backward and forward, and on either side ; and 
with the point of a diamond he traced these 
mottoes on them : — 

" Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his 
way ? By taking heed thereto according to thy 
word." 

" When thou goest, it shall lead thee ; when 
thou sleepest, it shall keep thee : and when thou 
awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the com- 
mandment is a lamp, and the law is light." 

" We have also a more sure word of prophecy, 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto 
a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day 
dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts." 

" If we walk in the light, as He is in the 
light, we have fellowship one with another, and 
the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us 
from all sin." 

A lamp lighted while it is yet day, — such a 
lamp as is let into the roof of a railway carriage, 
and the little child wonders why they should put 
it there at noon, but for which no one is more 
grateful when a few minutes afterwards they 
plunge into the tunnel ; such a lantern as the 
prudent traveller provides before he is benighted, 
— such a lamp is no bad emblem of our own 
case in relation to the Bible. God has provided 
us with a sufficient guide to a blissful immor- 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 5 

tality. H is W ord is a light to our feet, and a lamp 
to our path. In Britain, throughout Protestant 
Europe, in the whole of North America, there 
is hardly any one who may not, if he chooses, 
find and keep that path of faith and holiness 
which leads to heaven. But few set out on the 
great pilgrimage whilst the daylight lasts. It is 
not till all around is growing dark, that they re- 
member that this is not their rest, and that they 
have a city still to seek. It is not till shadows 
from the tomb, or conscious guilt, or clouds of 
grief enwrap them, that they find they must sport 
no longer. And as they grasp their staff, and 
gird their loins, they bless that wonderful good- 
ness which has already furnished them with a 
light so clear and unquenchable. In their merry 
moments they paid no attention to it. They 
hardly knew that it was burning. Now they are 
astonished at its brightness. The intenser that 
the shadow grows, the more dazzling does it 
shine : and now that neither sun nor stars 
appear, — now that the glare of folly, or the glee 
of health has faded, — they find to their surprise, 
that their route is becoming plainer, and their 
spirit waxing stronger ; for, as if instinctively 
aspiring back to the "perfect day" from which 
it came, the lamp burns brighter and yet brighter 
as they go. 

" Young man, attend to the voice of one who 
has possessed a certain degree of fame in the 



6 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 



world, and who will shortly appear before his 
Maker. Read the Bible every day of your life." 
So said Dr Johnson to a young gentleman, who 
visited him on his death-bed ; and so has many 
a pastor said to his young people, — so has many 
a dying parent said to his children. And if it 
were from a minister, or some venerable Chris- 
tian friend that you heard such counsel, you re- 
ceived it respectfully ; if it were from a dying 
father or mother, with tears you promised to 
comply. Have you forgotten ? Have you 
wearied in well-doing ? Have late hours or 
other pursuits supplanted the Word of God? 
No : you say that you read it still. But you 
read it as a task. You would be glad of a dis- 
pensation. You would be thankful for a release 
which would not hurt your conscience, or im- 
peach your filial piety. You carry about the 
lantern, because you would deem it a profanity 
or a breach of promise to cast it away. But 
hitherto you have found no real occasion for it ; 
and it would not be honest to say that you have 
used it as a light to your feet, for you have never 
sought nor followed its guidance. 

And yet, dear friend, God can soon make that 
Bible precious. He can send a dangerous sick- 
ness ; and when you are amusing yourself with 
a novel or a game of cards, the doctor may come 
in, and after he is gone your friends are agitated ; 
your sister looks pale, her eyelids are moist, her 



The Bible and the Inquirer. f 



cheerfulness is forced ; and it all comes out : 
You are never to get better, — you have sentence 
of death in yourself. And, after the first flutter 
of surprise, you push away the novel or the 
cards, and you say, " Bring me my Bible." Or 
you went to church one Sunday, and God's 
Word found you out. "Without holiness no 
man shall see the Lord." " Be not deceived : 
neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor thieves, 
nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor 
extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." 
" Strive to enter in at the strait gate." " He 
that believeth shall be saved : he that believeth 
not shall be damned." You heard something 
which made you feel that if you continue as you 
are, it would have been better for you never to be 
born. You grew dull and moody; but, after a few 
rebellious strugglings, your spirit was subdued. 
You saw yourself in a new light, and that holy law 
of God which you have been all your life trans- 
gressing. You felt that you had done wickedly 
and that you were truly vile. And in this humble 
frame of mind you took up the Testament, and, as 
well as you could recall them, you turned to those 
passages which tell the grace of the Lord Jesus, or 
which announce God's pardoning mercy. What 
it was that caught your eye at last we do not 
know ; but it caught your heart as well ; for 
you were presently on your knees, with tears of 
surprise and thankfulness drenching the open 



g 



The Bible and the Inquirer* 



volume, and sobbing out your praises to Him 
" who forgiveth all your iniquities, and crowneth 
you with loving-kindness and tender mercies." 
And ever since, notwithstanding many decays- 
and declensions, you have been a very different 
reader and hearer of the Word from what you 
were before. 

It is by making the heart soft or the spirit 
serious, that God makes His own Word pre- 
cious. It was in this way that several of the 
French prisoners in England, during the war 
with Napoleon, to all of whom copies of the 
Scriptures w 7 ere offered, came under .its sub- 
duing and renovating influence. In the ab- 
sence of amusement and with nothing to excite 
them, many of them beguiled occasional hours 
of captivity with a book, which in the bustle of 
the camp they would never have dreamed of 
opening. They learned from it a secret which 
reconciled them to many a privation, and which 
sent more than one of them back to France en- 
riched with the pearl of great price. It is thus 
that many a convict has had cause to acknow- 
ledge with gratitude the timely detection which 
brought him acquainted with God's Word, and 
which, making him a new creature, admitted 
to the fellowship of saints the outcast of society. 
And it is thus that many a man has had reason 
to adore that gracious, though for the moment 
mysterious, sovereignty, which stripped him of 



The Bible and the Inquirer. g 



his wealth, or deprived him of his dearest friend, 
or left him for life a shattered invalid ; but which, 
in the same dispensation, taught him to cry, 
" The judgments of the Lord are more to be de- 
sired than gold, yea, than much fine gold." " I 
am a stranger in the earth : hide not thy com- 
mandments from me." " I am become like a bottle 
in the smoke ; yet do I not forget thy statutes." 

It does not matter what has been the sober- 
ing or softening influence. It does not matter 
whether there has been some striking providence, 
or whether, from causes which you can hardly 
specify, you have been brought to unwonted 
solicitude about the one thing needful. There 
is One Being with whom, if your relations are 
right, nothing need greatly disquiet you ; and 
there is only one document which can inform 
you how with Him right relations may be se- 
cured and maintained. This is the peculiar 
value of Scripture, that to the question which 
Nature only answers by dim hieroglyphics or 
brilliant paradoxes, its reply is articulate and 
authoritative ; and on the problem, which reason 
could not meet even by approximation, it sheds 
the light of a simple and exhaustive solution. 
To the question, " What is God?" it answers, — 
not space, — not nature, — not the universe, — not 
merely the Great First Cause ; but it answers, 
Jehovah : Jehovah all-sufficient : the Lord Al- 
mighty : that living and personal God whose 



io The Bible and the Inquirer. 



justice and benevolence are as infinite as His 
wisdom and power, and who does not embark 
vaster resources or a stronger interest in the 
framing of a world than He can afford for the 
welfare and enjoyment of some one like your- 
self, created after His own image, and of whose 
spirit He claims to be the Father. And to the 
further question, " What are the dispositions of 
this God, so just and benevolent, so wise and 
mighty, — what are His dispositions to a sinner 
like me?" it answers "merciful and gracious, 
forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin." But 
comforting as this assurance is, it is not conclu- 
sive : and till the final query is met, — till you 
know what to do so as to attract towards your- 
self God's mercy rather than His justice, — 
general information as to the Divine generosity 
and goodness can give you no absolute confi-' 
dence God-ward. It is here that the Scripture 
comes forth with its specific announcement, and 
meets the soul longing for God's friendship with 
its welcome oracle. God has sent forth His Son 
to redeem and retrieve lost sinners of our race. 
The expiator for our guilt, and, if resorted to, the 
intercessor for our souls, as willing as He is 
worthy, the Son of God is man's Saviour ; and to 
plead His atonement, — to cling in grateful de- 
pendence to His cross, — is the same thing as to 
see our name in Life's Book, our soul in Life's 
Bundle. God loves the Saviour, and to those 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 1 1 

who receive Him He gives power to become 
sons of God. Sin is perdition, but the antidote 
of sin is the merits of the Saviour. Sin is perdi- 
tion, but union to Christ is salvation. 

As the present remarks are chiefly designed 
for those who are just making a commencement 
in religion, or who are only thinking about it, we 
shall conclude with a few words to those who 
feel some interest in the subject, but who have 
not yet come to a plenary persuasion that the 
Scriptures are the Word of God ; and to those 
to whom the subject itself is distasteful, for they 
despise or dislike that great salvation which the 
Scriptures reveal. 

I. You feel an interest in religion, but you are 
not sure that you have found a revelation. And 
if there were only time, you could mention a 
great many difficulties in the Book and about 
the Book which have hitherto prevented you 
from receiving the Bible as the undoubted Word 
of God. And you want to know, " What am I 
to do ? 1 cannot love Christ, till I am convinced 
of the facts concerning Him ; and I shall not be 
convinced till once I am furnished with conclu- 
sive evidence. I assure you that I am in ear- 
nest, but I am not convinced. Where shall I 
find the evidence?" 

Permit us then to ask : If a doctrine were holy, 
and if predictions were uttered, and miracles 



12 The Bible and the Inquirer. 



were wrought in its behalf, would you not be- 
lieve that holy doctrine thus attested to be truly 
divine ? Based on such prophecies and mira- 
cles, would you not feel that it rested directly on 
the omniscience and omnipotence of God? But 
with Jews still in the world, and with their Old 
Testament the same as our own, do you not 
believe that the Old Testament prophecies were 
uttered long before the appearance of Jesus 
Christ ? And from the proofs of their sincerity 
given by the apostles do you not believe that the 
miracles which they have recorded in the New 
Testament are true ? In other words, do you 
not believe that as the fulfilment of so many 
prophecies and the fountain of so many mira- 
cles, Jesus Christ was all that He claimed to be, 
and which His first disciples died declaring, — 
the Son of God and the Saviour of men ? 

Then again, on the Saviour's authority and 
from the wonderful fulfilment of their prophe- 
cies, do you not believe that the books of the 
Old Testament are inspired ? On the strength 
of Christ's promises and their own frequent 
assertions, do you not believe that the apostles 
were divinely commissioned to unfold the Chris- 
tian doctrine more fully to the world ? And on 
the testimony of friends and foes from the first 
century downwards, from the impossibility of 
forgery, and on their internal evidence, do you 
not believe that the books of the New Testament 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 13 

are the writings of Christ's apostles ? And be- 
lieving all this, do you not actually concede 
that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ment are the Word of God ? * 

In a matter of such moment we do not depre- 
cate the utmost caution ; but at the same time, 
in a matter of such urgency you should hoi 
grudge the utmost diligence. It is the turn of 
your mind to "prove all things," and, like that 
most sagacious of animals which will not cross 
a bridge till it has tested its strength, — you say 
that you can adventure no interest except on a 
well-proven conclusion. So be it ; but at the 
same time remember that this is no holiday ex- 
cursion, but a life or death retreat, — an escape 
for dear existence. Remember that betwixt 
this islet which you occupy and a blissful im- 
mortality, — betwixt mortal life and eternal glory, 
if this bridge be not trustworthy, there is not 
any other. Your choice is small. It is not, 
Which of many? It is not even, Which of 
two ? But it is, This or none ! You are in 
the predicament of a castaway, who finds him- 
self on a dry sandbank surrounded by a rising 
tide. There were only a few furlongs of it at 
the first, and already it is half submerged, when 

* By such a process of successive inferences, a most accom- 
plished student describes himself as conducted to the thresh- 
old of that faith, which became the joy and rejoicing of his 
heart. — Memoir of Rev. J. Brown Paterson, pp. 152, 153. 



14 The Bible and the Inquirer. 

the people on the shore espy him and send a 
boat to bring him off. But he cavils at its 
construction. He doubts if it is safe. He 
questions if it will ever get to land. Nay, he 
has strong suspicions that there is no land at 
all. But what do you intend to do ? There is 
nothing else in sight — neither sail nor steam. 
And you have not long to hesitate. Your bank 
grows less. The waters rise. They soon will 
swell up to the brim, and the place that knows 
you now will not know you to-morrow. You 
might have trusted us : for all this trouble was 
taken, not to destroy one who is drowning at 
any rate, but with the hope of saving you. 

You say that you are sincere and earnest. 
We rejoice to hear it ; for in that event it is no 
uncertain issue. Doubtless, there is an earnest- 
ness which prevents people from deriving the 
full comfort from the most abundant and over- 
whelming evidence ; just as a man's anxiety for 
his own or his children's safety may make him 
question the sea-worthiness of a first-class ves- 
sel. In the present case few are rendered nerv- 
ous by inordinate anxiety : far more continue 
sceptical, or languidly assenting, because their 
solicitude is only a troubled sleep — a half- 
awakened apathy. If you are only sufficiently 
in earnest, your doubts will soon dispel. In His 
Word God has not left Himself without a witness. 
The strongest consolation in this world is theirs 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 15 



who have fled for refuge to the hope set before 
them in the gospel, and the most rational of men 
is the believer in Jesus. 

To every man who is really earnest, the Bible, 
sooner or later, commends itself as the Word of 
the true and holy God ; and its pre-eminent 
revelation, the gospel, commends itself as the 
wisdom and the power of God. It is no true 
earnestness which does not make men candid ; 
and in the case of Christianity candour is the 
high-road to conviction. A guileful heart may 
be superstitious, and the evil heart of unbelief 
may be strangely credulous ; but it is the heart 
which God himself makes " honest " which 
yields to evidence, and which, when God speaks, 
instinctively trembles at the Word — which, when 
God shines forth, immediately rejoices and 
adores. " From me Christ required no miracles 
as witnesses of His truth ; He himself, His life, 
His thoughts, His actions, towered above the 
mist of centuries, — the one perpetual miracle of 
history, the holy ideal of a perfect humanity." 
Such was the deliverance of a late popular Swiss 
author : * and the same self-evidencing power 
of the Scriptures has been thus described by a 
man of science at Strasburg:f — "A single book 
has saved me ; but that book is not of human 
origin. Long had I despised it, long had I 
deemed it a class-book for the credulous and 

* Zchokke. t Professor Bautain. 



1 6 The Bible a?id the Inquirer. 

ignorant ; until, having investigated the gospel 
of Christ, with an ardent desire to ascertain its 
truth or falsity, its pages proffered to my in- 
quiries the sublimest knowledge of man and 
nature, and the simplest, and, at the same time, 
the most exalted system of ethics. Faith, hope, 
and charity were enkindled in my bosom ; and 
every advancing step strengthened me in the 
conviction that the morals of this book are as 
superior to human morals, as its oracles are 
superior to human opinions." 

The fact is, when a man holds out his lantern, 
and asks you if there is a light in it, you may be 
able to convince him that there is ; but the very 
circumstance of his asking such a question makes 
you fear that he is blind ; and at all events five 
minutes of clear vision would be worth a world 
of your arguments. When a man asks, Do you 
think the Bible is inspired ? is it really the light 
of God which is shining there ? you may 
prove it by unanswerable argument ; and yet 
you cannot help regretting that he should need 
to appeal to others ; nor can you help remem- 
bering how it stands written, " The natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ; 
for they are foolishness unto him : neither can 
he know them ; for they are spiritually dis- 
cerned."* To any one who finds himself in this 
predicament, the best advice we can give is, 

* i Cor. ii. 14. 



The Bible and the Inquirer. 



17 



Read and pray. Yes, read and pray. Pray, 
" Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold won- 
drous things out of thy law." And as you pray 
this prayer, read the book, and ponder its say- 
ings ; and better feelings will spring up in your 
mind — holy thoughts and loving, grateful 
thoughts towards Christ, kind thoughts towards 
your follows, devout and contrite thoughts to- 
wards God. " The commandment of the Lord 
is pure, enlightening the eyes : " and it opens the 
eyes by rejoicing the heart.* You cannot be 
long in wistful contact with it without imbibing 
some of its hallowing influence. You cannot 
look long at the lamp till its own quickening 
radiance has opened your eyes. Whilst to its 
sure word you are still taking heed, the day will 
dawn and the day-star arise in your heart, 

2. Dear reader, it is a solemn thing to be en- 
trusted with these lively oracles. That Bible is 
a sacred book. It is God's angel, either hos- 
pitably lodged or ignominiously neglected in our 
homes. May that messenger of God's mercy 
never prove, through mal-treatment, the recorder 
of our guilt, and the fatal witness against our 
wilful impenitence and reprobate mind ! For 
whether or not we open the Bible to ascertain 
God's present will concerning us, it is one of 
the books which shall be opened, and by which 
our lot shall be fixed, when He comes to decide 

* Psalm xix. 8' 

B 



1 8 The Bible and the Inquirer. 



our final destiny, We are not done with it. We 
must meet it yet again. Before the great reckon- 
ing day there will be an end of most human 
authorship ; and, except as the good or evil 
which they have done may rise up to bless or 
condemn the writers, no more will be heard of 
them. But when all other books are forgotten, 
when these heavens and this earth have passed 
away, not a jot nor a tittle of God's Word shall 
have perished ; but by the light of the Great 
White Throne we shall read the self-same pages 
which we so often turned over in our earthly 
dwellings. Oh that we could occasionally read 
these Scriptures with that impression on our 
minds : — This is the Word of God which en- 
dureth for ever. When I awake on the resur- 
rection morning I shall see few of the things 
with which I am now familiar. My house and 
my lands will not be worth a day's purchase 
then, and gold and precious stones may be had 
for the gathering : but the soul will be worth 
exactly what the Bible declared : — it will be 
cheap could it be bought with a whole world. 
The comrades whose smile of connivance or 
whose drunken plaudits used to embolden me in 
sin, will not avail me when I stand confronted 
with a holy God ; but just as the Bible has said 
I shall find it, — " Though hand join in hand the 
wicked shall not be unpunished." The systems 
of philosophy, and the different forms of human 



The Bible and the Inqiiirer. 



19 



religion will melt in the midst of that great un- 
veiling ; and the popular opinion may turn out 
a grand illusion : but in the new heavens and 
the new earth I shall recognise the same Jeho- 
vah, and shall read the same grand principles of 
right and wrong, with which I was brought ac- 
quainted when a child in the Sabbath school. 
Yes, names and notions written in the earth 
must corrode, and crumble, and pass away ; the 
earth itself must melt in fervent heat, and revive 
in a new creation ; but Christ's words shall never 
pass away. Nay, in their lonely and majestic 
surviving they shall seem to absorb all other 
words into themselves ; and as I read the flame- 
bright legends on the tables of eternity, amidst 
the wreck of all besides, Revelation will stand 
out the great reality ; and I shall feel the re- 
sponsibility which, in his retrospect of the 
" Course of Time," the poet ascribes to the pos- 
sessors of this volume : — 

" They had the Bible. Hast thou ever heard 
Of such a book ? — The author God himself. 
The subject God and man ; salvation, life 
And death — eternal life, eternal death ! 
Most wondrous book ! bright candle of the Lord J 
Star of eternity ! — the only star 
By which the bark of man could navigate 
The sea of time, and gain the coast of life securely. 
This book, — this holiest, this sublimest book, — 
Was sent — heaven's will, heaven's code of laws entire— 
To man : this book contained, defined the bounds 
Of vice and virtue, and of life and death ; 
And what was shadow, what was substance taught.** 



CHAPTER II. 



THE BIBLE AND THE BELIEVER. 

In the spring of 1817, there used to meet to- 
gether in a large saloon at Geneva, from twenty 
to thirty students. Some of them were ardent 
and accomplished young men, and all of them 
were aspirants to the Christian ministry. But 
at that time little faith was found in Geneva. 
The city of Calvin and Beza was under the spell 
of Voltaire and Rousseau, and in the christened 
Paganism of its Theological Academy, " St Plato 
and St Seneca" had supplanted St Paul and 
St Peter. These young men assembled every 
alternate evening, and took their places at a 
long table,, on which lay the Hebrew and Greek 
Scriptures, with many versions, German, French, 
and English. In this little college, the professor 
w r as a retired naval officer from Britain. He 
was a grave and thoughtful man. He had 



The Bible and the Belieuer. 



21 



gained his ascendancy over his scholars, by the 
interest which he manifested in their future 
ministry. They had no idea that the pastorate 
was such a responsible and weighty office ; but 
as he spoke so seriously about the thousands of 
souls of which they were soon to have oversight, 
the solemnity of the stranger solemnised them- 
selves. They were now searching the Scriptures 
daily, on purpose to ascertain the truth of God : 
and as unheard-of doctrines, such as human 
corruption, the incarnation, justification by the 
righteousness of another, one by one came forth 
from the open volume, great was the astonish- 
ment of these youthful " Bereans." Of course, 
many difficulties were felt, and not a few objec- 
tions and cavils were started : but it was only 
by comparing scripture with scripture, that Mr 
Haldane explained or defended its statements. 
tc There it stands written with the finger of God," 
was the end of the matter ; nor was there any 
question on which texts did not occur instant 
and apposite to this " living concordance." As 
the result, almost every one of these students 
became a distinguished evangelist ; and in the 
persons of men like Gonthier and Rieu and 
Merle d'Aubignd, many dark places in France, 
Belgium, and Switzerland were penetrated by 
the light of the gospel ; nor is it saying too 
much to affirm, that, through the Evangelical 
Society in which it ended, the whole of French- 



22 The Bible and the Believer. 



speaking Europe is destined to feel the effects 
of that season's earnest Bible-searching.* 

The Bible is the book out of which every 
reformation of doctrine has issued, and every 
revival of religion. And whether we are called 
to be the instructors of others, or are only de- 
siring security and precision to our own system, 
we cannot do better than resort at once to the 
oracle. Or, as is still more likely, if any one of 
us has notions indefinite or undecided on some 
important article, he cannot do better than 
study that portion of Scripture in which it is 
especially treated. Is it the person of Christ 
on which you long for clearer light ? Do you 
want to know whether He is Divine, and whether 
without idolatry you may give Him not only 
love and gratitude, but adoration and worship ? 
Then read the books of St John. Is it the great 
atonement on which you desire to be more fully 
informed ? Do you wish to know the exact 
function which the great High Priest discharges, 
— whether His "finished" work be an exclusive 
and exhaustive expiation for sins, or a sacrifice 
requiring constant repetitions, and originating 
a new sacerdotal order ? Then read the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. Or is it on the doctrine of 
justification that you covet more precise and 

* See " The Lives of Robert and James Alexander Hal- 
■dane," chap, xviii. 



The Bible and the Believer. 23 

thorough instruction ? Do you seek to know- 
where God would have you rest your hope of 
heaven ? whether it is your faith, or your feel- 
ings, or your improving self, that He would have 
you trust, — or His own dear Son the Saviour ? 
Then read the Epistles to the Romans and 
Galatians. Whatever be the point on which 
you would know the mind of God, you will find 
some portion of His Word which gives forth the 
Divine deliverance ; and when that portion is 
illustrated and confirmed by appropriate paral- 
lels, your faith will stand not in the wisdom of 
man, but in the power of God. 

However, to regard the Book as a mere oracle 
giving forth responses on doctrinal questions, 
is a cold theory of Scripture. The poet * tells 
how he " shot an arrow into the air," and owing 
to the swiftness of its flight he lost it. In like 
manner, he adds, 

" I breathed a song into the air ; 
It fell to earth, I knew not where. 
Long, long afterward in an oak 
I I found the arrow still unbroke : 

And the song, from beginning to end* 
I found again in the heart of a friend." 

Such recoveries and recognitions of one's 
thoughts are always pleasant. You had forgot- 
ten the saying ; but months afterward some one 
tells you how to him it had proved such a word 

* Longfellow. 



24 



The Bible and the Believer, 



in season. You have no remembrance of having 
ever met this prosperous merchant ; but he asks, 
" Do you not recollect the advice you gave a 
young man, who brought you a letter of intro- 
duction from such a friend twenty years ago ? — 
advice which I followed, and here I am." Nor 
does anything delight you more, than to find 
that you are so loved by another that he acts on 
your wishes, and you constantly see carried out 
in his silent proceedings, requests or suggestions 
of your own. If the most delicate token of affec- 
tion, this is also the most decisive. It proves 
that you live in the heart of your friend ; and 
that, seen or not seen, you are truly dear to 
him. 

God's bow is never bent at a venture. He 
never loses sight of His arrows. No word of His 
ever misses its mark, but each accomplishes its 
purpose. And yet it is not the less a joy to Him 
when that word finds a welcome, and of all men 
he is to the Most High the dearest, in whose 
affections God's words are hidden the most 
deeply, and in whose conduct they most con- 
spicuously reappear. 

Perhaps, it will be brought still nearer to our 
apprehension if we recall the saying of the 
Saviour, " If ye abide in me, and my words abide 
in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be 
done unto you." " If ye keep my command- 
ments, ye shall abide in my love ; even as I have 



The Bible and the Believer. 



25 



kept my Father's commandments, and abide in 
His love."* In the heart of Immanuel were 
hidden all the desires and commandments of the 
Father ; and to carry them into effect, was the 
labour of love which gave unity and grandeur to 
His entire incarnate history. And it was this 
which drew towards Him the perpetual compla- 
cency of His heavenly Father. On the one side, 
the obedience of His beloved Son was an incense 
ever ascending through the sin-laden atmo- 
sphere of earth ; and, on the other side, the 
Father's recognition of that obedience was a 
blessing constantly returning, — dispelling in 
some degree the miasma of the curse, and open- 
ing through our murky air streaks of that sap- 
phire which formed the firmament of an un- 
tainted Paradise. And just as it was by keeping 
the Father's commandments that the Son abode 
in the Father's love, so it is by keeping the 
Saviour's commandments that He tells us we 
shall abide in the Saviour's love. Nay, if Christ's 
word abide in us, we shall come to such a bless- 
ed unison, — oar will shall be in such harmony 
with His, and such a delight shall it be to Him to 
show His love to His disciple, that "we shall 
ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us." 

The Saviour desires our love. He desires to 
live in our grateful affection. And just as what- 
ever we do in remembrance of Him, helps to en- 

* John xv. 7, 10. 



26 The Bible and the Believer, 

dear Him to us, so the more richly that His word 
dwells in us, the dearer are we to Himself. 

Wherever such a word is acted out, the soul 
is at once made happier and stronger. It is 
instantly brought nearer to that Divine Friend 
whose promise is thus trusted, or whose wishes 
are thus fulfilled : and, as an inevitable conse- 
quence, it receives an augmentation of spiritual 
vigour, and is better able to believe the next true 
saying, or to do the next right thing. 

A little girl, ten years of age, who had long 
been nursing a sick sister, and whose mother 
was in feeble health, was getting quite worn out. 
One morning as she trudged along to procure 
medicine, — as she thought how hard it was to 
be always waiting on the invalid when other 
children were at play : and then, when she 
thought how likely it was that her sister would 
die, — betwixt weariness and grief she began to' 
weep bitterly. But a sudden thought crossed 
her mind. Her tears were dried, and her step 
grew light and nimble. After she returned, notic- 
ing how cheerfully she went about her work, 
and how briskly and easily she did it, her mother 
asked the reason. It turned out that the verse 
had come into her memory, " I know, O Lord, 
that thy judgments are right, and that thou in 
faithfulness has afflicted me." Day and night 
thenceforward she never wearied in her attend- 
ance on the invalid. Her cheerful countenance 



The Bible and the Believer, 



27 



did more good than any medicine. And ere long 
she had her reward, for her sister recovered.* 

Mr Simeon, of Cambridge, was at one time 
an object of much contempt for Christ's sake 
and the gospel. And though usually he bore 
up bravely, it was very trying to know that no- 
body liked to be seen in his company : and one 
day as he walked along with his little Testament 
in his hand, he prayed that God would send him 
some cordial in His Word. Opening the book 
his eye alighted on the text, u They found a 
man of Cyrene, Simon (or Simeon) by name ; 
him they compelled to bear Jesus' cross." " And 
when I read that," he tells us, "I exclaimed, 
' Lord, lay it on me : lay it on me ; I will gladly 
bear the cross for Thy sake.' And I henceforth 
bound persecution as a wreath of glory round 
my brow."f 

In the Tower of London you have read the 
verse inscribed by one of the bloody Mary's 
prisoners, " He that endureth to the end, the 
same shall be saved." And you remember how 
it is related of the Noncomformist, Mr Law- 
rence, of Baschurch, that when some one re- 
minded him that he had eleven good arguments 
against giving up his living, and asked him how 
he meant to maintain his wife and ten children, 

* "The Holy Scriptures" (Tract Society Anecdotes) — where 
many interesting facts are collected, 
f Simeon's Life, p. 676. 



28 The Bible and the Believer. 



he answered, " They must all live on the sixth 
of Matthew, ' Take no thought, saying, What 
shall we eat ? or, Wherewithal shall we be 
clothed ? but seek first the kingdom of God, 
and his righteousness, and all these things shall 
be added unto you.' " And countless instances 
might be quoted where, to every range of intel- 
lect, from the little child up to the learned philo- 
sopher, and in all emergencies, from a matter of 
daily routine up to a question of life or death, 
the all-fitting and all-foreseeing Word of Christ 
has been the antidote of temptation, the incentive 
to duty, the joy in tribulation. On its nail fas- 
tened in a sure place thousands have suspended 
their earthly future as well as their eternal all, 
and they have not been confounded. With its 
sword turning either way they have put to flight 
armies of doubts and fears, and whole legions 
of Satanic suggestions. Times without number 
on the guilty conscience of the troubled spirit 
has a healing leaf descended, fresh from the 
Tree of Life, and charmed into the evenings ec- 
stasy the morning's anguish. None of that Word 
shall return to the Great Speaker "void;" for 
according to their various faith or susceptibility, 
absorbed into the soul of disciples, it will out- 
live the most enduring of tablets, and outshine 
the most brilliant of transcripts ; and although 
every Bible should perish, the whole of Christ's 
sayings might be recovered from His living 



The Bible and the Believer. 29 

epistles. They might all be collected again in 
the hearts of Christ's friends. 

All flesh is grass, and the grave is fast filling 
with great authors. Once they are there, praise 
cannot flatter them, affection cannot cheer them. 
And, except that small number whose " works 
do follow them," they may either be ignorant of 
the influence which they are exerting in the land 
of the living, or they would rather that they did 
not know. But the Author of the Bible lives. 
The Saviour, whose sayings it perpetuates, lives. 
The Holy Spirit, who taught the men of God to 
write it, lives. It is a joy to the Lord Jesus 
when any saying of His finds a frank believer or 
a cheerful doer. It is a gladness to the Spirit of 
Grace when those pure loving words of His re- 
fine a coarse nature, or persuade a stubborn will, 
or heal a broken heart. It is a delight to the 
Most High when His own truth credited leads 
any soul to regard Him trustfully and loyally, 
and to cry to Him, Abba, — our Father who art 
in heaven. The Author of the Bible is not like 
one who publishes a great book, and so far as he 
is concerned its influence is posthumous : but 
He is rather like one who sends a letter into 
your dwelling and awaits its result. He is 
rather like one who has indited a volume with 
an eye expressly to your benefit, and who finds 
his joy fulfilled and his. purpose answered when 
you begin to bend to its reasonings, to mould 



3 o 



The Bible and the Believer, 



your life on its maxims, to fill your soul with its 
inspiring motives. Under God's eye read God's 
own Book, and pray for that Comforter's teach- 
ing who can make the literal Scripture a living 
message and a transforming power. Then, — 
when your principles and rules of action are de- 
rived from this celestial source, you will under- 
stand how a man by becoming truly scriptural 
becomes " a temple of the Holy Ghost." And, 
if you cannot say it yourself, when Christ's Word 
dwells in you richly, you will understand how 
another could say it, " I live, yet not I : Christ 
liveth in me." Believing God's truth and re- 
ceiving God's Spirit, as long as the Lord lives 
you need never want a friend, nor as long as He 
has a cause in the world, need you ever want a 
pursuit. 

As we said in the last chapter, it is the darkness 
which makes the lantern so welcome. And it is 
the darkness of the sick-room or the house of 
mourning in which this " Night-lamp " * emits 
such a soft and heavenly radiance. You will find 
it so. Fond as you are of books, there is only one 
that you will value at last : with your head on 
the pillow you will hardly care to be told that a 
new volume of the Great History is published, 
or a marvellous epic out-peering all its prede- 
cessors. " No ; read me the twenty-third Psalm. 

* The appropiate name of a very edifying narrative of a 
sister's last days, by Dr John Macfarlane. 



The Bible and the Believer. 31 

Let me hear the fourteenth of John." When 
your strength sinks yet lower, — when your 
interest in all under the sun has faded away, 
and ebbing life affords not even a parting tear, — 
it will for a moment rally the worn faculties, to 
hear the whisper, "My flesh and my heart 
faileth : but God is the strength of my heart and 
my portion for ever." a Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me." And when all is 
over, when to orphan children and desolate 
kindred the world is grown a great sepulchre, 
and the most tender friends are vain comforters ; 
when letters of condolence lie unopened, and 
words of compassion fall like hailstones on the 
heart, — the first thing which sends a warm ray 
into the gloom, and brings to the eye tears that 
are not bitter, is when Jesus himself breaks the 
silence, and you hear, " I am the resurrection 
and the life : he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live." " What are these 
who are arrayed in white robes, and whence 
came they ? These are they who came out of 
great tribulation, and have washed their robes, 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
Therefore are they before the throne of God, 
and serve him day and night in his temple : and 
He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among 
them. They shall hunger no more, neither 



32 



The Bible and the Believer. 



thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on 
them, nor any heat. For the Lamb who is in 
the midst of the throne shall feed them, and 
shall lead them unto living fountains of water : 
and God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes." 

By the confession of the world's own poet, 
" Christianity is the religion of the sorrowful." * 
Nothing can be truer. Christ is indeed the 
mourner's Friend. Christ's Word is the "Af- 
flicted Man's Companion." And if any humane 
spirit would like to mitigate the distresses of 
his brethren ; if you would fain be a son of 
consolation to the sons of sorrow, the kindest 
thing you can do is to conduct them to this 
source of perennial comfort. The world is full 
of sufferers : and if you do not meet them in 
the streets, city missionaries and others will 
soon direct you to their dwellings. There, or 
in the public hospital, you will find them, bed- 
rid, consumptive, palsy-stricken, blind, wasting 
away in direful diseases ; and what can you do 
for them ? What can philosophy do ? What 
can mere human philanthropy do ? The one 
would discourse on the pain-conquering power 
of a resolute will, or would expatiate on the lot 
of mortality : — as if writhing anguish could be 
mesmerised by stoic saws, or a fever could be 
cured by fatalism. And the other, wiser and 

' x " Moore in "The Epicurean." 



The Bible cuid the Believer. 33 

kinder, would seek for the tossing sufferer better 
attendance, or purer air, or a less uneasy couch ; 
but it is a short limit to which when humanity 
has gone, it can go no further. The best skill 
cannot cure old age ; the rarest cordial cannot 
tempt the sickly palate ; the purest air, the 
softest couch, the kindest nursing cannot conjure 
into health those that are doomed to die. But 
in His mercy God has provided an assuagement 
for such misery, — an effectual antidote to the 
worst ingredient in the cup of woe. Visiting 
your poor neighbour, you will probably find 
that antidote already in the house, but its value 
is still unknown. It is your privilege to be the 
ministering angel, and to point out to the dying 
Hagar the hidden well. Putting into the words 
as much of Christ's own tenderness and kind- 
ness as you can, you read or repeat some 
appropriate passage ; and, just as the scanty 
strength can bear it, you add here a little and 
there a little, and renew your visits till, in an 
arrested ear and opening heart, God crowns your 
love and answers your prayers. And those only 
who have seen it can tell the difference between 
the sick-chamber where there is no hope, and 
one lit up with immortality— between the dull 
endurance or the rebellious resistance of the 
stricken transgressor, and the patient cheerful- 
ness and prophetic joy of a Lazarus, whose sorry 
couch is spread in glory's vestibule. So that 

c 



34 



The Bible and the Believer, 



next to his highest service who preoccupies with 
scriptural principle a healthful youthful neigh- 
bour, and who thus secures for society a Chris- 
tian citizen, as well as for heaven a meet 
inheritor, — is his visit of mercy who carries to 
the abodes of wretchedness the tidings of great 
joy, and who, with the help of the Holy Spirit 
reveals the secret which makes the worst pain 
tolerable, and the sorest affliction joyful, — which 
beguiles with songs the longest night, and 
teaches the man of sorrow alway to triumph 
through Jesus Christ. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE BIBLE AND THE INVALID. 

Salmasius was perhaps the most learned man 
in all the seventeenth century. He had read not 
only books, but libraries ; and yet, when he 
came to die, it was his bitter exclamation, " Oh, 
I have lost a world of time ! Had I but one 
year longer, it should be spent in reading David's 
Psalms and Paul's Epistles." Wheresoever the 
Bible may be despised, it is sure of a respectful 
welcome in the sick-room ; and however stal- 
wart the intellect, however sturdy the gait of 
healthy days may have been, there is no comfort 
in the valley, without the sustaining of this staff. 
Some Christians stand forth from their fellows, 
conspicuous for moral energy or mental vigour ; 
but in those solemn hours, there is nothing left 
for any but to fall back on the faithful saying. 
There have been few braver spirits than John 
Knox ; few steadier thinkers than John Foster ; 



36 The Bible and the Invalid. 



but the biographer of the latter tells us, that 
"during the last two or three days of his life, the 
Scriptures (chiefly the Psalms) were by his own 
desire exclusively read to him ;" and when Knox 
was laid on his death-bed, along with other por- 
tions, he made his attendants read to him every 
day the fifty-third of Isaiah and the seventeenth 
of John. 

The late Mrs Isabella Graham of New York 
had compiled for her own use a little collection 
of scriptures and hymns, which she entitled 
" Provision for my Last Journey through the 
Wilderness, and Passage over Jordan." And 
whether collected into a manual or not, it is well 
to have at command those portions of the Word 
which, thoroughly trusted in the faintest hour, 
will be " everlasting arms " around the spirit. 
For such purposes none are so suitable as the 
simplest announcements of God's forgiving and 
fatherly mercy, — those gospels of His grace 
which constitute the pre-eminence and the 
charm of the scriptural revelation. Short and 
plain, they are divinely adapted to the languid 
powers of sickness ; or, should there be a capa- 
city for more sustained attention, the gentle 
words of the Saviour, and the soft breathings of 
the psalmist, will fall on the ear more sooth- 
ingly than the accents of the most tender human 
comfoiter. 

However, the sickness may not be " unto 



The Bible and the Invalid. 



37 



death ;" at least so gentle is its progress, and so 
slowly do its stages succeed one another, that 
the house appointed for all living is a terminus 
far off and rarely remembered. You have little 
pain ; you are only very feeble ? Or, you have 
paroxysms of severe suffering, but with long in- 
tervals of ease ? You hope to get better ? Or, 
you fear that you will not ? We do not know 
how it is with the frail body ; only you are an 
invalid. And in that circumstance you have a 
special call to acquaint yourself with the Word 
of God ; and for attaining this acquaintance 
you have a great advantage. God in His pro- 
vidence is now saying, " Arise ; this is not your 
rest ;" and by secluding you from distracting 
occupations or giddy friends, He is giving you 
a rare opportunity to commence that acquaint- 
ance with Himself which will make you blessed 
now and ever. 

In his old age Carsten Niebuhr, the great 
traveller, was blind ; but, as he lay on his bed 
or reposed in his easy-chair, his face would 
be often luminous with an inward joy. He was 
meditating on the splendid scenes which he had 
so often viewed in the sunny Eastern land : and 
as its glowing landscapes and its brilliant starry 
vault rose again from the depths of his memory, 
he feared for them no eclipse, and never missed 
the flat marshes of Holstein. And so, dear 
reader, should God open your eyes to the won- 



33 



The Bible and the Invalid. 



ders of His Word, you will not be resourceless 
though all other joys are cut off. You will grow 
intimate with patriarchs, and apostles, and other 
noble acquaintances whose names are in the 
Book, and whose present abode is in the many 
mansions. You will get to know a Friend whose 
earthly history is in the Book, and whose present 
home is at the right hand of the Father ; — a 
Friend who, when the midnight taper reveals no- 
thing save an empty room, is still so nigh that 
He can hear your softest whisper : and were you 
breathing forth your spirit in the silence, would 
bear it instantly to the bosom of immortality, 
and introduce it to the white-robed company. 
You will become familiar with the New Jerusa- 
lem, an4 the tree of life, and the pearly gates, 
and the crystal river. And, mayhap, as you 
meditate on these, and as you essay to think on 
the glorious perfections of the great I Am, and 
as you muse on the paradise that was, and on. 
the new earth that is coming, and as precious 
promises crowd round you, each with an ear- 
nest in its arms, — amidst the bliss of believing 
God's truth and the joy of enduring God's will, 
you may get such songs in the night as never 
were heard in the halls of the worldling, and the 
visions of God will eclipse all the pageants of 
time. 

So was it with a happy sufferer whose history 
we lately read. Poor and dependent, for six-and- 



The Bible and the Invalid. 



39 



thirty years the victim of incurable maladies, 
often undergoing excruciating agony, some- 
times for a lengthened period blind, few have ex- 
perienced the exquisite enjoyment of which her 
shattered tenement was the habitual abode. As 
she wrote to a friend, " My nights are very 
pleasant in general. I feel like David when he 
said, 6 1 wait for the Lord ; my soul doth wait : 
and in His Word do I hope.' And while I am 
enabled to contemplate the wonders of redeem- 
ing grace and love, the hours pass swiftly on, 
and the morn appears even before I am aware." 
" I experience so much of the Saviour's love in 
supporting me under pain, that I cannot fear its 
increase.'' Once, when a lady, shuddering at 
the spectacle of her sufferings, said that if called 
to endure such pain herself her faith must fail, 
Harriet quoted the text. "Strengthened with all 
might, unto all long-suffering with joyfulness," 
and added, " Yes : and I think this is one end 
to be answered in my long afflictions — encourage- 
ment iox others to trust in Him. This precious 
Book is my constant companion, and its truths 
and promises my unfailing support."* 

* 14 Gold Tried in the Fire : a Memoir of Harriet Sloneman." 




CHAPTER IV. 



LESSONS IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE — THE 
CHEQUE AND THE COUNTERFOIL. 

There are many ways in which intelligent 
readers have come to the conclusion that the 
books of Scripture are genuine, that their narra- 
tive is authentic, and that the message which 
they carry to mankind is indeed the Word of 
the living God. Some of these proofs require 
a certain amount of erudition in order to feel 
their force, or considerable powers of attention 
in order to follow the argument ; but others 
are so obvious that he who runs may read. 
Nor should it ever be forgotten, tEatTto the 
sound mind Christ is His own witness, and 
Christianity carries its own commendation. 
There is also a class of proofs intrinsic to the 
Bible itself, which to the most of minds are very 
conclusive when rightly brought out, and which 
are all the more valuable, because they need no 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 



4i 



cumbrous apparatus of external evidence. Of 
these we shall try to give an example in this 
and the following chapters. 

Coming home, a ship's company describes a 
remarkable scene which it has witnessed in the 
course of its wanderings. Discredited by some 
and believed by others, the deponents adhere to 
their statement with wonderful tenacity ; nor 
can imprisonment and torture induce them to 
alter a single iota. After they are dead, and 
when all evidence is converging towards the 
truth of their story, many regret that they can 
no longer see and cross-question the original 
narrators. However, it turns out that in a pub- 
lic collection are sundry pictures containing an 
elaborate representation of the controverted in- 
cident, and believed to be the work of some of 
the spectators, or exact facsimiles from their 
originals. In settling the dispute, it is obvious 
that great interest will attach to these drawings, 
and it will be a matter of the utmost moment to 
ascertain their trustworthiness. Are they not 
modern forgeries ? Do they contain no fatal in- 
congruities ? no anachronism in costume ? no 
solecism in the landscape, or the objects which 
people it ? and are they not flagrant copies the 
one from the other ? — all four the same cunning 
fable in so many different disguises ? 

No, says the artist : they are not modern. 



42 Lessons in the Christicui Evidence. 

They are as old as the time they profess. Their 
transmission is straightforward and abundantly 
established ; and, even though there were no 
other proof, I know their antiquity from their 
style, and from the pigments and vehicles em- 
ployed in their production. 

No, say the physical geographer and the an- 
tiquary : they are true to the given time and 
place. That is the exact aspect of the country, 
and those are its characteristic birds and flowers. 
And this is the dress of the period ; and some of 
the personages introduced I can recognise as 
contemporaries, and very correctly represented 
they are. 

No, says the critic : they do not copy one 
another. Some of them may have used pre- 
existing sketches, or they may have had access 
to certain materials in common. But they are 
all distinct and independent ; and some of them, 
at least, have drawn from the life. They give 
traits and details which would never occur to 
any but an actual observer. 

So says the scholar : The Gospels are as old 
as the commencement of the Christian era. For 
the professed antiquity of no books is the docu- 
mentary evidence so abundant : but even though 
all manuscripts and versions were destroyed, 
their very speech bewrayeth them. Their lan- 
guage is the Greek of Galileans. After the 
first centuries that Hellenistic dialect ceased to 



The Cheque and the Coiuiterfoil. 43 

be spoken by any people ; and, after it became 
a dead language, to write in it such books as we 
now possess, would have required a scholarship 
almost supernatural. We can have no more 
pictures the same as these; for the very pigment 
which makes them so peculiar has perished. 

We agree with you, say the naturalist and the 
archaeologist : they are true to the region they 
represent. The Gospels are still written on the 
face of Palestine. To return to your compari- 
son, — they remind me of a picture where, in 
representing some remarkable coloured strata, 
that there might be no dispute as to the truth of 
the tinting, the artist had actually painted with 
specimens of the several rocks finely pounded. 
In these Hebrew sketches I recognise the very 
dust and stones of Zion ; and I have no manner 
of doubt that they are the work of Jews anterior 
to the destruction of Jerusalem. 

And asked to pronounce on these old pictures, 
how does the critic proceed ? 

Setting them side by side, he is first of all 
struck by the different style of all the four. 
Each artist has his own affinities, — an eye for 
something which another overlooks, — his own 
touch and impasto and finish. This first, with 
his careful draughtmanship and scientific exac- 
titude, is a manifest systematist, and gives every 
object as a philosopher would see it. That other, 
more eclectic, is withal more picturesque ; and 



44 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

his pencil everywhere scatters the expressive 
minutiae and the happy hits of the descriptive 
poet. In the masterly perspective, the wavy 
flow, and the skilful grouping of the third, you 
recognise the practised strokes and pleasing 
effects of the accomplished limner. Whilst in 
the flaming fragments of the fourth, — in the em- 
pyrean background, and in the warm air and 
summer joy of the nearer distances, as also in 
the divine animation with which the canvas 
heaves and palpitates, you perceive a soul which 
had life abundantly, and which labours to con- 
vey a glimpse of its own glorious vision, only 
grudging the imperfection of all material ve- 
hicles. Each is distinct and independent. Each 
could repeat himself in manifold variety ; but 
not one of all the four could pass for his neigh- 
bour. 

Laying the four Gospels alongside of one 
another, you observe the Hebrew instincts of St 
Matthew. With heraldic accuracy the com- 
mencement of his narrative is a long genealogy, 
supremely interesting to a nation compared with 
whose youngest family our British Percies and 
Howards are men of yesterday. Then with a 
sort of black-letter fondness for precedent, or 
rather with a believing Israelite's reverence for 
prophetic Scripture, ever and anon he is repeat- 
ing, " As it is written," — " That it might be ful- 
filled which was spoken by the prophet." And 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 45 

in the large collection of parables, so pleasing to 
Eastern readers ; in the recital of those miracles 
which especially attested the Messiahship of 
Jesus ; and in the prominence given to incidents 
and discourses which throw light on the " Root 
and Offspring of David," you discern the He- 
brew of the Hebrews, — the Jewish historian, so 
systematic, so scriptural, so conscious of his 
country. 

Almost as Western as Matthew is Eastern, 
Mark gives the Syriac Addas, and Ephphathas, 
and Talitha-cumis, along with their translation ; 
and " centurions," " speculators," " quadrantes," 
or farthings, are set down or explained just as 
they would have been by a Greek or Roman 
Jew returning to Palestine. But still more char- 
acteristic are his selection of striking incidents 
and the vivid precision of his picturesque lan- 
guage. The shortest of all the evangelists, he is 
nevertheless the most graphic ; and his work 
may be compared to the cabinet picture of a 
true master of the old Netherlands school, — 
sharp in its outline, full without crowding, and 
clear in its lucid compactness. And like such a 
master, too, a touch will often add another fea- 
ture ; an expressive dot will light up a wide sur- 
face with new significance. It was "green grass" 
on which the multitude was made to sit down ; 
it was at a "place where two ways met" that 
the colt would be found which the disciples were 



4.6 Lessons in the Christian Evidence, 

to bring to their Master ; not only did a young 
ruler come to ask a question at Jesus, but he 
came " running and kneeling down ; " not only 
was our Lord forty days in the wilderness, but 
He was " there with the wild beasts ; " not only 
did He slumber in the tempest-tossed vessel, 
but He lay "in the hinder part of the ship asleep 
upon a pillow not only did He suffer the little 
children to come to Him, but He was " much 
displeased" with those who forbade them, "and 
He took them up in His arms, put His hand 
upon them, and blessed them."* 

Then, with his elegant exordium, comes a 
fluent and skilful biographer, whose orderly se- 
quence aids the memory, as much as his grace- 
ful periods charm the ear. Not professing to be 
autoptical, but claiming a " perfect understand- 
ing of all the incidents from the very first," from 
the materials which " eye-witnesses " supplied 
he has compiled a narrative continuous and 
lively, and worthy of an accomplished historian 
—though ever and anon professional allusions 
and the recurrence of medical terms remind us 
of " Luke, the beloved physician." 

Need we — can we characterise the picture 
with which the series ends ? Omitting every 
parable, and recording those miracles only in 
which the heart as well as the power of his 
Master was exhibited ; detailing at length His 

* " The Literary History of the New Testament," p. 41. 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 47 

conversations and His confidential addresses to 
His followers, as well as the various traits of 
majesty or tenderness which had most deeply 
impressed the narrator's own mind, from its 
transcendent commencement to its touching 
close, it is a mighty effort to perpetuate the grace 
and truth which came in Jesus Christ : whilst 
over the whole there hovers an atmosphere of 
"joyful solemnity " * and seraphic benevolence, 
itself sufficient to show that the author was once 
in contact with the heavenly Original. 

Such is the first inference which we draw from 
this comparison of the four Gospels. They are 
not four productions of one biographer, but 
each is the work of a distinct individual. In 
other words, there are four evangelists as well 
as four Gospels. To say nothing of external 
evidence, but judging entirely from their intrinsic 
style and manner, especially when read in the 
original, these four memoirs are the work of 
four separate biographers. 

Looking at them again, we are struck with 
their circumstantial minuteness. One canvas 
may be more crowded than another ; but each 
of them contains, perhaps, a hundred heads, and 
many of them with very decided and definite 
features. Not only is the great central object 
carefully depicted in all, but there is no tendency 
to slur over, in safe and shadowy vagueness, the 

t Da Costa. 



48 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

subordinate and accessory figures. Each is 
given fresh and firm, and with the precision of 
those who had the original before them. Look- 
ing at these historic sketches, you instantly 
observe the copiousness of truth and the exac- 
titude of personal information. Romancers lay 
the scene in a distant region or a departed time ; 
the evangelists recount events happening in their 
own country and in their living day. And de- 
ceivers confine the story to their own immediate 
coterie, and take care to introduce no names 
which might be apt to resent the fraud and 
publish the imposition. But, strong in conscious 
truthfulness, the evangelists abound in dates, 
and in names of well-known persons and places. 
Jerusalem, and Jericho, and Nazareth, are intro- 
duced as freely as Capernaum or Bethsaida ; 
men in public station, like Joseph of Arimathea 
and Nicodemus, and hostile personages, like 
Annas and Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, the Herods 
and Herodias, are brought in with no more hesi- 
tation than Peter, and James, and John. Miracles 
do not happen to nameless people in unknown 
regions ; but it is on the road from Jericho to 
Jerusalem, and on the eve of a memorable 
Passover, that Bartimeus, the blind beggar, the 
son of Timeus, is restored to sight ; and it is at 
Bethany, a village two miles from the capital, 
that a few days afterwards Lazarus is recalled 
from the tomb. Everything is distinct and ex- 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 



49 



press ; and having nothing to fear from contra- 
diction, by multiplying incidents, and by intro- 
ducing well-known persons and places, they put 
it in the power of every contemporary to ascer- 
tain the truth of their testimony. 

Surveying our pictures once more, we are 
finally struck with sundry delicate and unde- 
signed coincidences between them ; and when 
we say " delicate and undesigned," we purposely 
exclude those obvious and outstanding features 
which could scarcely elude the notice of even a 
copyist ; but we refer to those little and recondite 
ingredients which can only occur in sketches 
direct from the original. For instance, in num- 
bers One and Two this gray speck might pass 
for a stone or a sheep, and it is only when we 
refer to number Three that we find it is meant 
for a human figure. In a corner of one picture 
is what seems to be a single tree ; in another, a 
lozenge of light opens tnrough the trunk ; and 
in a third sketch, the perforated bole resolves 
into two distinct trees planted near to one 
another. And as these remote agreements -and 
recondite mutual illustrations successively arise 
to our earnest gaze, the conviction grows at last 
irresistible, that whatever they may have known 
of one another, there was a common original to 
which the artists were indebted alike for their 
variations and their concord. When we take 
up the evangelists, we are struck with that free 

D 



50 Lessns in the Christian Evidence. 

and independent way in which each gives his 
version of events, as if secure that his statement 
will speak for itself, and no less confident in the 
veracity of his several colleagues. He shows 
no nervousness as to his reception. He makes 
no effort to soften down what is strange, or to 
give extra effect to what is surprising. He offers 
no explanation to make his narrative tally with 
some previous history, or to establish its own 
self-consistency. But, on the other hand, there 
is occasionally a seeming contradiction ; a pre- 
termission of particulars, or a condensation of 
incidents, or a peculiarity in the spectator's 
standing-point, which gives the narrative all the 
air of a meaningless tale, or an entirely differ- 
ent story, till a careful comparison supplies the 
gap and completes the harmony. 

For instance, in his account of the crucifixion, 
Matthew tells that " the soldiers smote Jesus 
with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy 
unto us, thou Christ, Who is he that smote 
thee ?" And in this challenge there seems 
nothing very difficult, and we could not have 
seen the force of the insult nor the meaning of 
the passage, had not another evangelist written 
down, "And when they had blindfolded hint, 
they struck him on the face, saying, Prophesy, 
Who is it that smote thee?" (Luke xxii. 64.*) 

* See the Rev. J. J. Blunt on "The Veracity of the Gospel, 
and Acts of ihe Apostles." In this work, and its companion 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 5 1 



All the evangelists agree in telling, that when 
the high priest's officers came out to arrest Jesus, 
Peter drew a sword, and smote off a servant's 
ear. And yet both Matthew and Mark agree in 
relating, that when Christ's persecutors sought 
all sorts of evidence against Him, so as to make 
out a case before the Roman governor, they 
could procure none. But is it not very strange, 
that when the high priest had in his own palace 
such a striking proof of the violent character and 
dangerous designs of these Galileans, he should 
not have called as a witness his own wounded 
servant ? Had we possessed no information 
beyond the narratives of Matthew and Mark, 
this would have been a flagrant difficulty. You 
say that the whole effort of the priests was to 
prejudice Pilate against Jesus, as a seditious and 
turbulent character ; but they could substantiate 
nothing. Why was not this recent and conclu- 
sive witness forthcoming ? Especially when 
Jesus said to Pilate, " My kingdom is not of this 
world ; if my kingdom were of this world, then 
would my servants fight, that I should not be 
delivered to the Jews," — why did none of His 
accusers reply, "Yes, but your servants did 
fight, and one of them has inflicted a wound on 

volume on the Five Books of Moses, in the " Horse Paulinas " 
of Paley, and the Rev. T. R. Birks's ingenious Supplement, 
the reader will find these undesigned coincidences accumulated 
to an amount absolutely overwhelmirg. 



52 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

the sacred person of the high priest's servant?" 
Now, had we possessed no Gospels except these 
two, we could not have accounted for so strange 
an oversight on the part of the priestly faction. 
But Luke mentions a circumstance which suf- 
ficiently explains it. From his account we find, 
that as soon as Peter smote off the ear Jesus 
healed it agai7i ; and by doing this He effectually 
disqualified the wounded servant from appear- 
ing as a witness against Him. The priests were 
in this dilemma. If next morning they pro- 
duced the servant as a proof of the violence of 
Christ and His followers, how could Pilate credit 
them ? That wound was never inflicted over- 
night, or it could not be cured so soon. Or if, 
to explain this latter circumstance, they ac- 
knowledged that Christ had instantaneously 
healed it, they would at once have trod on 
dangerous ground, and would have given Pilate 
another reason for suspecting — what he was 
already very apt to surmise — the superhuman' 
character of his prisoner. 

In Matthew (viii. 16) we read, that "when the 
even was come they brought unto him many 
that were possessed with devils, and he cast out 
the spirits with his word, and healed all that 
were sick." But why was it eve7iing when they 
brought to Jesus those demoniacs and sick 
persons? From Mark (i. 21, 32) we find that 
it was the Sabbath-day ; and from Luke (xiii. 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 53 

14) we find that the Jews thought it sinful for 
" men to come and be healed on the Sabbath- 
day." But we also know that the Jewish 
Sabbath ceased at sunset ; so that when the 
evening was come the people would feel no 
scruple in bringing their afflicted friends to 
Jesus to be healed. But observe how far we 
have to travel before we can complete Matthew's 
simple statement. He merely mentions that it 
was in the evening Jesus wrought these cures ; 
and had we possessed Matthew's narrative 
alone, we might have laid no particular stress 
on the time of day. But we go on to Mark, and 
we find that it was the Sabbath evening, " when 
the sun was set." And we go on to Luke, and 
find, though in a totally different connexion, 
that these Jews would have thought it very 
wicked to carry the sick or to accept a cure on 
the Sabbath. And it is just because the parti- 
culars are so minute that the coincidence is so 
valuable. They are just such trifles which a 
true historian is apt to omit, and just such 
trifles that a fabricator would never think of 
supplying. Or if we could imagine a forger 
systematically attempting to complete the omis- 
sions of his predecessor, he would not deposit 
his supplemental information in nooks and by- 
paths, where ages might elapse before it was 
discovered ; but he would exhibit his addendum 
in some conspicious position, and would take 



54 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

care that it should arrest the reader's atten- 
tion. 

The more delicate these coincidences are, the 
surer is the inference from them. If you were 
comparing a cheque with the cheque-book from 
which it was said to be taken, and found not 
only the cut portion to correspond with the 
counterfoil, but if on microscopic examination 
the torn corner finely coincided, — if you found 
its rough and ragged edge and each riven fibre to 
match exactly the surface from which it was said 
to be sundered, you could no longer doubt that 
the piece of paper in your hand had been taken 
from that book. And these delicate agreements 
of one evangelist with another show that their 
story is an extract from the Book of Truth, — a 
leaf from the volume of actual occurrences, — a 
derivation from a counterpart original. The 
evangelist John tells us, (vi. 5,) that on one 
occasion, when surrounded by a weary multi- 
tude, Jesus said, " Whence shall we buy bread, 
that these may eat ? " And in putting this 
question He addressed Himself to Philip. But 
John hints no reason why He should have put 
this inquiry to Philip rather than to any other 
apostle. Luke, however, (ix. 10,) mentions that 
the place was a desert near to Bethsaida ; and 
John himself happens to have mentioned, in the 
opening of his Gospel, (i. 44,) that Bethsaida was 
the city of Philip. And laying these three 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. £g 

insulated passages together, we see how natural 
it was to put the question, " Where is bread to 
be bought ? " to one acquainted with the neigh- 
bourhood. Had we not possessed John's Gospel, 
we should never have known that such a question 
was asked; and had we not possessed Luke's 
Gospel, we should never have seen the special 
propriety of asking it at Philip. 

We have chosen these examples because in 
them the truth of certain miracles happens to be 
implicated. If the coincidences now quoted be 
real and undesigned, then, not only are they an 
irresistible argument for the truth of the col- 
lective narrative, but they establish directly as 
facts the healing of Malchus's ear, the cure of 
many sick and demoniacs, and the miraculous 
feeding of the multitude with five loaves and 
two fishes, — for it is in the recital of these 
miracles that those coincidences, so truth- 
vouching, occur. And if, again, these miracles 
be true, then is Jesus all that He professed,-— 
for it was in support of His claims as Messiah 
that He wrought these miracles. 

But from the Gospels we may transfer this 
test to other portions of the New Testament. 
We have there a book mainly occupied with 
the travels of St Paul ; and alongside of it 
we have thirteen Epistles ascribed to the same 
apostle. Now, even supposing that the author 
of the Epistles and the author of the Acts 



56 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

were the same individual, it has been trium- 
phantly shown, by a sort of microscopical 
survey, that nothing but scrupulous truth or 
omniscient falsehood could account for the 
complex and involute agreement which subsists 
between them. To detect these latent harmonies 
was, perhaps, the greatest service to historic 
Christianity which acumen and sound sense 
united have ever rendered ; and though it is im- 
possible to offer any abstract here, we may safely 
congratulate as proof against circumstantial 
evidence the sceptic who reads the u Horae 
Paulinae," and still doubts whether such a man 
as Paul existed, whether his Epistles be genuine, 
and whether the Acts of the Apostles be true. 

We have often visited the ruins of a famous 
castle, with which, no doubt, many of our 
readers are well acquainted. Long ago it was 
captured, and that it might never be a strong- 
hold to the patriots of Germany again, the 
enemy burnt it and blew up the walls. But in ' 
the weedy foss is still shown a huge fragment of 
a tower, which, when exploded, alighted there ; 
and in the goodly joining of its stones and the 
hardening of its ancient mortar such a rocky 
mass had it become, that when lifted from its 
base, instead of descending in a shower of rubbish, 
it came down superbly a tower still. And, like 
that massy keep, the books we have been con- 
sidering are so knit together in their exquisite 



The Cheque and the Counterfoil. 57 



accuracy, the histories are so riveted to one 
another, and the epistles so mortised into the 
histories, — and the very substance of epistles 
and histories alike is so penetrated by that 
cement of all-pervasive reality, that the whole 
now forms an indissoluble concrete. And 
though all coeval literature had perished, — ■ 
though all the external confirmations were de- 
stroyed, — though all the monuments of antiquity 
were annihilated, strong in its intrinsic truthful- 
ness, the New Testament would still hold its 
lofty place — a tower of self-sustaining integrity. 
And though the efforts of enmity were to succeed 
as they have signally failed, — though learned 
hostility were to undermine its documentary 
foundations, and blow up that evidence of 
manuscripts and early versions on which it 
securely reposes, so finely do its facts fit into 
one another, so strongly are its several portions 
clamped together, and in the penetration and 
interfusion through all its parts of its ultimate 
inspiring Authorship, into such a homogeneous 
structure has it consolidated, that it would come 
down again on its own basis, shifted, but nowise 
shattered. Such a book has God made the 
Bible, that, whatever theories wax popular, or 
whatever systems explode, " the Scripture can- 
not be broken." 



CHAPTER V. 



LESSONS IN THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE— THE 
MOULD AND THE MEDALLION. 

For understanding some subjects, and for ap- 
preciating some kinds of evidence, a special 
education is requisite. In order to understand 
the true theory of the planetary system, the 
mind must be prepared by a knowledge of 
mathematics, The Newtonian system would 
still be the true theory of the universe, even 
although no mortal could appreciate the proofs 
on which it rests : but where there exists a com- 
petent knowledge of geometry, and where the 
celestial phenomena are adequately observed, 
the doctrine of gravitation forces itself on every 
sane and unprejudiced understanding. In other 
words, it sometimes needs one truth to pave the 
way for another. 

When the Most High was about to introduce 
into the world the most important of all revela- 



The Mould and the Medallion. 59 

tions, He prepared a receptacle on purpose for 
it. He selected a " peculiar people," and by a 
lengthened process of instruction He fitted them 
for understanding His final message, and for giv- 
ing the first welcome to the world's Redeemer. 

Had the Advent taken place in Italy or 
Greece, or in ancient Britain, we can scarcely 
see how the Saviour could have made His 
meaning understood, or how He could have 
demonstrated His celestial mission. Believing 
in a thousand deities, — believing, too, that 
heroes and patriots had often been promoted to 
a place among the gods, had Jesus appeared in 
such a nation working His miracles of mercy, 
it would have been supposed that He was just 
another Hercules or Esculapius, or a god come 
down in the likeness of men, and who would 
again go back to His native Olympus. With a 
most imperfect ethics,— perceiving little harm in 
fraud and covetousness, in lust and falsehood, 
and practising without remorse the most atro- 
cious of crimes, — they had scarcely first princi- 
ples sufficient to appreciate the heavenly mo- 
rality of the Mount of Beatitudes, and had no- 
thing of that " conscience of sin " which longs 
for a Saviour. And possessed of no prophecies, 
— taught by no Moses or Isaiah, — they neither 
looked out for a Messiah, nor did they know the 
tokens by which to distinguish Him when once 
He appeared. 



6o Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

Put for this greatest event of human history 
God prepared a people and a place ; He pre- 
pared the Hebrew people and the Holy Land. 

First of all, He segregated the Hebrew race 
from all the nations of the world. Enclosing 
them within a cordon of rites and ceremonies 
more exclusive than any brazen wall, He planted 
them in Palestine, and through the long pagan 
ages He kept them dwelling quite alone. By a 
process as strange as it was wise and effective, 
He familiarised them with certain great ideas, 
and taught them those fundamental truths which 
it was essential that at least one nation should 
know. 

He taught them that God is one ; that He is 
a spirit, infinite and omnipresent, the Creator of 
all things. And in teaching them the unity and 
spirituality of the Divine nature, He placed 
them on a platform immeasurably exalted above 
the whole of Heathendom. In the absolute and 
undoubting certainty that there is only one God, 
and that God is a spirit, infinite and eternal, — 
the starting-point of a Hebrew child was in ad- 
vance of the theological goal of a Plato and a 
Seneca ; and in the mere absence of graven 
images, alongside of the intensest devotion, 
Palestine presented an aspect all the more im- 
pressive that it was entirely unique and unparal- 
leled. 

He taught them many of the Divine perfec- 



The Mould and the Medallion. 6l 



tions. The gods of the nations were at the best 
immortal men, — heroic personages, with a mix- 
ture of human infirmities and superhuman 
powers. Most of them were deified monsters or 
canonised villains, — patrons of murder and theft, 
and every pollution ; and it is no wonder that 
the worshippers of Kali and Bacchus grew 
nearly as vile as the almighty brutes whom 
they adored. But Israel knew that Jehovah is 
holy. They knew that the great Creator loves 
truth and purity, and that all His perfections are 
arrayed against the thief and the liar, the un- 
chaste and untrue. They knew that God is 
righteous and faithful to His promises ; that He 
is slow to anger and abundant in mercy. And 
though it was only a single psalm, like the 103d 
or the 139th, more true theology, more genuine 
devotion, more of child like faith in the Supreme, 
would be chanted any morning in the Temple 
in one such Hebrew hymn than could be com- 
piled from the sacred songs of all the neighbour- 
ing bards from Hesiod and Homer down to 
Pindar and Callimachus.* 

* The processes of this education have been illustrated in a 
work of remarkable freshness and power, which we recommend 
to all who have not yet read it, " The Philosophy of the Plan of 
Salvation. By an American Citizen." Nor can the historical 
books of the Old Testament be perused with thorough appreci- 
ation till the reader has his eyes open to this master-fact. It s 
only when he remembers the important end for which the Most 
High was teaching and training the "peculiar people," that he 



62 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 



He gave them good precepts, and in the ten 
commands the Hebrews had a code the most 
simple, precise, and comprehensive which a 
people could desire, and issued with all the 
majestic sanctions of a legislation direct from 
Heaven. 

He taught them the enormity of sin. Not 
that other nations had no sense of sin ; but their 
apprehension of its demerit and its turpitude 
was faint, even when they felt its danger. But 
to the Israelite the law of the leper, the scape- 
goat, the morning and evening sacrifice, the Day 
of Atonement, and the perpetual ablutions and 
offerings, were so many mirrors ; and in the 
focus where all the light concentred was that 
dark and dreadful evil, sin. And of all men then 
existing, it was only from the heart of a Hebrew 
that such bitter cries could be wrung, " Have 

can see the rationale of the Levitical code, with all its specifi- 
cations of creatures clean and unclean ; and it is only then that 
he can understand why judgments so severe and terrible fol- 
lowed acts of transgression. It was needful to wean the people 
from idolatry ; and the plague which followed the erection of 
the golden calf was a sharp and signal lesson. It was all-im- 
portant to give an impressive view of the Divine sanctity, — the 
immeasurable interval betwixt the sinful creature and the Holy 
One of Israel ; and this impression was instantly produced by 
the fate of Korah and his confederates, and afterwards of Uzzah. 
It was essential that all should feel how the eyes of the Lord 
are everywhere, beholding the evil and the good ; and how 
could Jehovah's omniscience be more effectually taught to a 
rude and half-reclaimed nation than by the detection and 
punishment of Achan ? 



The Mould and the Medallion. 63 



mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lov- 
ing-kindness ; according to the multitude of thy 
tender mercies blot out my transgressions. 
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and 
cleanse me from my sin." 

Yet He taught them that sin may be taken 
away. Such was the avowed significance of each 
expiatory offering ; and the two ideas, — sin, and 
a satisfaction for sin, — were involved in every 
sacrifice. We can easily imagine the emo- 
tions of a Nathanael, or other thoughtful Israel- 
ite, on his yearly visit to Jerusalem. From the 
battlements of the " Beautiful House," the silver 
trumpets have sounded their peaceful signal, and 
the mighty portals are flung open for the day. 
Already the courts are peopled with kneeling 
groups and solitary Simeons at their morning 
prayer ; and from the fagots on the burnished 
altar the flame leaps soft and pale to the sun- 
shine ; — when, in his gorgeous robes, and with 
the Twelve Tribes flashing on his jewelled breast- 
plate, the high priest solemnly advances, and a 
Levite leads forward a spotless lamb. It was 
touching to see it there, and to know its doom ; 
last week sporting amidst its fellows on the green 
pastures of Bethlehem, and now the only one of 
its species amidst this strange multitude, for 
whose fault it is about to suffer, — its unused 
footsteps slipping on the marble floor, but silent 
and unresisting. Over its head, on which he 



6\ Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

lays his hands, the high priest confesses Israel's 
sins ; and then, taking from an attendant the 
sacrificial knife, next moment the poor firstling 
bleeds and dies. And as from the altar where it 
burns great clouds ascend, fragrant with wine 
and incense, the voice of praise and prayer rises 
loud and urgent ; and, the service ended, Aaron's 
successor turns to the prostrate worshippers, and 
uplifting his outspread hands, he says, " The 
Lord bless thee, and keep thee : the Lord make 
his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto 
thee : the Lord lift up his countenance upon 
thee, and give thee peace," — and amidst the loud 
amens the congregation separates, and the courts 
are clear. And so we might follow the wistful 
worshipper through the ceremonial of a Passover, 
or of a personal sin-offering : and in every sacri- 
fice he would see a remembrance of sin. For 
just as the morning sacrifice reminded him that 
sure as the favoured land woke up, so depravity 
went forth to repeat its daily doings : just as the 
evening sacrifice told him that six hours had not 
elapsed till, from the fermenting surface of a na- 
tion's life, a miasma had again arisen, which 
needed prayers and sacrifice to disperse its wrath- 
attracting exhalations ; so the Passover pro- 
claimed that, in the holiest home of all that Holy 
Land, there still was guilt sufficient to draw 
down Jehovah's ire, and that nothing could hold 
back the destroyer's sword save the sprinkled 



The Mould and the Medallion. 



sign, — at once a confession and a covert,— an 
acknowledgment of guilt, and an avowal of con- 
fidence in Jehovah's covenant : whilst, in like 
manner, the personal offering spoke the sad ad- 
mission, " Against thee, thee only, have /sinned." 
But along with the suggested sinfulness, simul- 
taneous and commingling, rose the idea of sub- 
stitution. Still the victim, and that victim most 
frequently the lamb, — beautiful and free from 
blemish ; the lamb so patient and meek, so 
innocent and endearing, such a favourite every- 
where, the gentle creature which you would like 
to carry in your bosom. But once more, the 
hand laid upon its head, and the guilt con- 
fessed,— once more, the glittering steel, the 
flowing blood, the dying struggle, — once more, 
the victim and the sacrifice. So that the same 
sacrifice which spoke of guilt published God's 
mercy. Along with the Divine displeasure, it 
gave a welcome hint of righteous reconciliation. 
It suggested a penalty, but a penalty which 
could be somehow transferred. And if to the 
transgressor it cried, "Behold your sin!" 
to the believing suppliant it audibly whispered, 
"Behold the Lamb of God who takes it away ! " 

Finally, in preparing a nation as the special 
shrine of the Advent, God sent to it many pro- 
phets. In predictions exceedingly numerous — 
and many of them remarkably precise — He gave 
the Jews tokens by which they might recognise 



66 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

the Saviour when He came. His Divine Father, 
His mortal mother, His tribe, His family, His 
birthplace, the period of His appearing, His pre- 
cursor, His miracles, His popularity, His betray- 
al, His cruel death in its minutest details, His 
reappearance in life, His ascension to heaven, 
and the wonders that should instantly follow, — 
all were so vividly described that for ages before- 
hand the Hebrews were furnished with ever so 
many "marks of Messiah." 

Thus peculiar were Palestine and its people ; 
and such were the great truths to which, through 
a term of fifteen centuries, the Most High had 
been gradually conducting them; till at last 
the Holy Land had become the only oasis in a 
blighted world, the only Goshen amidst the 
heathen gloom. Of sound theology and of sub- 
stantial morality, the Jews, however otherwise 
uninteresting, possessed a monoply ; and of 
all nations they alone had the means of acquiring 
those views of sin which awaken the desire of a 
Saviour. Theirs was the only land without an 
idol, and theirs the only one which boasted a 
revealed religion. The moral law was theirs, 
and theirs were all the prophets. And yet, 
with all their advantages, the Jews themselves 
were not a noble people. Generally speaking, 
they had no elevation of mind, no expansiveness, 
no spirituality. In the reign of the Caesars they 
had become a morose and selfish community — ■ 



The Mould and the Medallion. 



S7 



a set of noisy wranglers and repulsive fanatics. 
Could we suppose a philosopher like Seneca 
travelling in Syria about the year 25, we might 
imagine him writing, — "What a paradoxical 
people! Judging by the Greek version, there 
exists nothing comparable to their sacred books. 
Rules of virtue so strict, patterns of excellence 
so majestic, representations of the Deity so sub- 
lime, do not exist in any other literature. And 
they have many strange usages : a Sabbath 
every seventh day on which they do no work ; 
sacrifices which they offer with very singular 
but affecting observances ; many lustrations 
and intricate ceremonies. But the two most 
extraordinary features of this anomalous people 
remain to be noticed. There is not in all their 
land a single statue or image ; and yet they are 
not atheists. On the contrary, no people can 
be more religious ; but they fancy that any simil- 
itude, however costly or fair, would be an out- 
rage on the infinite and invisible Deity. Their 
other peculiarity is this : — their sacred books 
teem with predictions of a great Deliverer, who, 
they think, will acquire for their country uni- 
versal empire. He is suddenly to make his ap- 
pearance in their temple at Jerusalem ; and you 
cannot conceive with what intensity the expec- 
tation makes them cling to this temple ; which, 
indeed, is in itself a fane of surpassing costli- 
ness and glory. At this very moment they are 



68 Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

on the tiptoe of expectation ; for they affirm 
that the time has arrived for this conqueror 
coming. We shall see. I confess that I am 
perplexed. I admire the theology and ethics of 
these Jews ; and sometimes, in their gorgeous 
temple, with its veiled but vacant sanctuary, 
amidst their ancient worship, I feel as if I could 
adore the Jehovah of Israel. But when I look 
to the Jews themselves, and say, — Is this the 
product of that lofty creed and spiritual wor- 
ship ? these sour bigots and solemn triflers, 
these jabbering rabbis and snivelling pedants — 
are these the normal community, — the model 
people, — the optimist nation ? And when I see 
that such is revealed religion's masterpiece, I 
fall back upon philosophy, and am again the 
doubter." 

Not so, Sir Sage. Not the normal people, 
but the pupil nation. Israel is God's scholar, 
but he is not meant to be the world's pattern. 
By a series of admirable lessons God has been 
educating this nation with a view to the Saviour's 
arrival ; and in His wonderful wisdom He has 
contrived it that were Messiah coming now, the 
mass of the people would instantly be moved^ 
and yet He would obtain an enlightened welcome 
from only a small and wistful minority. The 
moment that His harbinger announces, "The 
kingdom is nigh ! " you shall see the whole coun- 
try stirred from end to end ; but when He adds, 



The Mould and the Medallion, 69 

" Behold the Lamb of God ! " few will follow. 
And yet these few, in following Messias, will 
move the world. But were it in your Rome 
that the cry was raised, " The kingdom of 
God ! " who would understand ? and were any 
one proclaiming, " Behold the Lamb ! " would 
not the magistrate confine him as a maniac ? 

No ; not the model people, but the mould for 
a nobler dispensation. It is only amongst a 
people who believe the Divine unity and holi- 
ness that an Incarnation can answer its purpose. 
It is only amongst a people habituated to the 
ideas of substitution and expiation that a gospel, 
based on sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, can 
find its first footing. It is only amongst a people 
possessed of the prophetic marks of Messiah, 
that He can be expected before He arrives, and 
identified when at last He appears. Like one 
who looks at the dark mould into which the 
artist is about to pour the liquid alabaster, and 
he thinks, " How black ! It will surely soil the 
fine material ! And pray, what is the use of 
these sharp cuttings and deep indentations'?" 
But the projection takes place, and as soon as 
the mass is set, there comes forth a copy from 
some great Master, — a Nativity, a Transfigura- 
tion, a Last Supper. You look at that Hebrew 
Institute, and you say, " Had it been the work 
of a Divine Artist, it had surely been fairer. ,> 
But you forget that it is only the matrix of a 



yo Lessons in the Christian Evidence. 

forthcoming model : the pattern* of eventual 
Perfection. Every depression and indentation 
has its meaning. These strict precepts and 
stern prohibitions will only give brighter relief 
to the counterpart gospel ; and the nicer and 
more numerous the lines, the more exquisite 
will the product appear. " Meats, and drinks, 
and new moons, and holy days, and sabbath 
days, are all shadows of things to come : but the 
body is of Christ." If you desire to know the 
meaning of this Hebrew Institute, you must 
look to Messiah. This land of greatest light 
has been prepared as His cradle. These pro- 
phecies are His credentials. That temple is the 
march-stone of the two dispensations, the limit 
which fixes His arrival, and on the hither side of 
which His coming must take place. That Old 
Testament is His text-book, and the pedestal of 
the national religiousness His pulpit. The very 
prejudices of the majority will be the means of 
accomplishing His great oblation, and the exist- 
ing rites and sacrifices are the hieroglyphics 
which His one offering will finally expound. 
And when once that Advent is accomplished, 
the old Institute will be abolished. When once 
the medallion comes forth, the mould will be 
broken. No counterfeit can ever appear ; for, 
exploding the temple, annihilating the royal 
family of Judah, and expelling every Hebrew 
* Heb. ix. 23. 



The Mould and the Medallion. 71 

from the Holy Land, God in His providence 
will make it impossible for any one after His 
own Messiah to be born at Bethlehem, or to 
claim descent from David, or to come suddenly 
to the temple at Jerusalem. And having ful- 
filled their first function as the pupil nation and 
the pioneers of the Advent, but rejecting the 
mercy which they transmit to others, the Jews 
will survive as God's witnesses. Sullen and self- 
blinded, the old scholar will wander everywhere 
a reluctant evidence that Jesus is the Christ, 
and that the gospel is Divine. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE MUSTARD SEED ; OR, THE GROWTH OF 
THE GOSPEL. 

THE plant which yields mustard is pretty well 
known ; at least, every one knows the bright 
yellow flower which too often in the months of 
May and June makes the corn-fields golden. 
The hard black seed of that charlock, when 
crushed, is hot and pungent, and is extensively 
sold as mustard ; and the true mustards are 
species of the selfsame genus. In England they 
grow to a height of four or five feet, and in the 
warmer climate and rich soil of Palestine they 
become much taller and more luxuriant. Speak- 
ing of the progress which His gospel was des- 
tined to make, the Lord Jesus said, " The king- 
dom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, 
which a man took and sowed in his field, (or 
'garden,') which is indeed the least of all seeds: 
but when it is grown, it is the greatest among 



The Growth of the Gospel, 



73 



herbs and becometh a tree, so that the birds of 
the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." 

Few interpreters, however, are content with 
such an " herb " or vegetable. They want a 
literal " tree," with a wooden trunk, and large 
enough for birds to build nests in the branches. 
So they suggest the Cissus arborea and Salva- 
dora Persica — trees which no man was likely to 
sow in his "garden," and which the original 
word would never suggest to a Greek or Hebrew 
hearer. Others, aware that Sinapi is the well- 
known herbaceous mustard-plant of husbandry, 
are naturally anxious to magnify it as much as 
possible. Thus Rabbi Simeon Ben Chalaphta 
is frequently quoted, who says : " There was in 
my field a stalk of mustard, into which I was 
wont to climb, as men are wont to climb into a 
fig-tree." The Rabbi does not tell us his size, 
but either he himself must have been very small, 
or his powers of imagination very great. 

If we look at Matt. xiii. 31, Mark iv. 31, and 
Luke xiii. 19, in the light of those locutions 
and usages which govern every language, we 
shall find no difficulty. This seed is sown, and 
when it is sprung up it becometh " greater than 
all herbs "— taller than the pulse and dill and 
other pot-herbs around it — in fact, " a tree ;" so 
arborescent that the finches and other little 
birds which are so fond of its seeds alight in its 
branches. Not a word is said about their build- 



74 



The Mustard Seed; or, 



ing their nests, as some have imagined : they 
simply perch or "lodge," {KaracrK^vovv^ "taber- 
nacle;") and there is no need to picture up 
among the boughs an eagle, or ospray, or any 
such rara avis as Rabbi Simeon. The mustard 
is a little seed ; but sown in a favourable soil it 
shoots up, and by and by can scarcely be called 
an herb : it is quite a tree, so that the birds 
which come to devour its seeds are hidden in the 
branches. 

Such is the meaning of the words. Then for 
the purport of the parable. Some of the fathers 
take occasion from it to descant on the medici- 
nal virtues of the substance itself. Augustine 
says that mustard has the power of expelling 
poison, and just as the mustard-plant overtopped 
the other herbs, so the true doctrine will out- 
grow and cast into the shade sectarian dogmas. 
Hilary remarks, that just as the sharp flavour of 
the mustard seed is brought out by tribulation 
— by crushing and grinding — so the efficacy of 
the gospel is brought out by persecution and 
affliction. The other "herbs" are the prophets, 
whose preaching was given to the weak and 
sickly Israelites ; but the branches of the mus- 
tard-tree are the apostles, to whom — like little 
birds tossed in the tempest — the nations resort, 
and wearied with the storms raised by the prince 
of the power of the air, seek refuge in the 
branches. 



The Growth of the Gospel. 



75 



All this may be ingenious, but it is quite 
irrelevant. The design of the parable is obvious. 
The underlying thought is simple and single. A 
little germ and a large result — a small com- 
mencement and a conspicuous growth — an ob- 
scure and tiny granule, followed by a vigorous 
vegetation — the "least of all seeds" and "the 
greatest of herbs " — such is the avowed contrast 
of the parable ; and the resemblance of this to 
the gospel, or the Christian dispensation, is the 
declared lesson of the Lord. 

Is it not so when we glance at the history of 
real religion in the world, in communities, in 
the individual soul f 

I. For instance : What a little and unlikely 
thing was the cradle of Bethlehem ! Most 
cradles come to nothing ; most infancies result 
in very ordinary specimens of upgrown human- 
ity ; and to the outside spectator there was no 
particular promise in the cradle watched by that 
Hebrew mother. It was not a cot of ebony or 
ivory, curtained with tapestry and covered with 
some wonder of the loom, and beneath such 
silken canopy as guards and glorifies the slum- 
bers of imperial infancy. It was placed in a 
stable, and was in fact the manger where a little 
while before the ox had munched his provender 
— cobwebs the canopy, a carpenter's cloak the 
covering. Nothing could look liker the outset 
of an abject existence, the germ from which you 



76 



The Mustard Seed ; or, 



would expect a very poor and vulgar history to 
spring. Thirty years after you could only ex- 
pect to find the occupant of that manger 
grown up into a rough, hard-handed, toil-worn 
man, tramping out and in among the boors of 
Bethlehem, tending these cattle like the foster- 
brother who had grown up among them, and 
exerting rude energy in feats of rustic sport or 
prowess. 

Thirty years passed on, and the tender plant 
had grown up, the root out of a dry ground began 
to bud forth and blossom. Jesus was manifested 
to Israel — the Son of Mary had become the 
marvel of Palestine. In words such as earth 
had never heard, because man had never spoken, 
He was revealing the Father : He was bringing 
God into the abodes of men — into the hovel of 
the fisherman and the haunts of the trader ; and 
with prodigies of power, such as seemed a na- 
tural accompaniment of supernatural sanctity, 
He was healing the sick, was raising the dead, 
was stilling the tempest, was feeding the hungry, 
and was on every side awakening the question, 
When Messias cometh, will He do greater mira- 
cles than this man doeth ? Even so. Blade by 
blade and branch by branch the seedling of 
Heaven had expanded, till a shekinah was 
visible in its Burning Bush ; and the child born 
in the stable, the infant cradled in Bethlehem's 
manger, answered to the name, Wonderful, Coun- 



The Growth of the Gospel. 



77 



sellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince 
of Peace. 

Dark, hard, unlovely, there is no resemblance 
between that seed and the luxuriant plant so 
broad in its branches, in its blossoms so golden. 
Such a mustard seed was the Cross of Calvary. 
To those who had begun to look for redemption 
in Israel, that Cross was a crushing disappoint- 
ment : to priests and Pharisees it was a source 
of savage exultation : to the rabble of Jerusalem 
it was an exciting spectacle, and the tragic 
finish of a strange career ; and whilst like a sword 
it pierced through Mary's soul, it was the tomb- 
stone under which disciples saw buried their hope 
and joy. The grain of seed fell into the ground 
and died. How different the scene two months 
thereafter ! Jesus by this time is risen : He has 
gone back to His glory : the Holy Ghost is given, 
and in the new light which from prophets and 
psalmists has broken forth, the gloom has cleared 
off Golgotha : Gethsemane's crushed and blood- 
stained sod comes out the battle-field, where the 
Captain of man's salvation has conquered ; and 
the Cross of Calvary, instead of the extinction 
of man's best hope, because the destruction of 
man's best Friend, stands forth the altar of the 
one accepted Sacrifice — the door of hope in our 
dark valley, the ladder with its foot on our sinful 
world, and heaven reconciled at its summit. 
Not two months, when this seed has begi n to 



78 



The Mustard Seed ; or, 



shoot forth gloriously. Not two months, when 
that Cross is lifted up, and looking to Him 
whom they have pierced, Jerusalem's inhabi- 
tants begin to weep. Again it is lifted up, and 
thousands more are melted. It travels out of 
Palestine, speeds across the seas, penetrates 
strange lands, and still God's Spirit goes with 
it. The savage, coarse and hisped, learns from 
it God's mercy, and rises from his knees a new, 
a mild, and gentle creature. The scorning 
sage, as he struts along, and with curled and 
contemptuous lip disdains mankind, espies its 
love divine, and conscious of a mysterious magic, 
a benignant balm which has got somewhere in 
about his heart, the great deep opens, a foun- 
tain begins to flow in his once arid but now dis- 
solving nature, and he goes forth amidst his 
fellows, a sunshine in his face, and a hand open 
as day to melting charity. With red arms the 
robber clasps it, and in its mighty expiation the 
crimson turns to snow. With remorse already 
stinging, the blasphemer presses to his burning 
bosom the healing tree, and the undying worm 
is no longer there. In life's last hour, the 
awakened reprobate sets in Christ crucified the 
full range of God's mercy, and from the jaws of 
perdition is transported to Paradise. And thus, 
with the powers of darkness in its front; and an 
altered world behind it, the Cross of Christ 
moved on ; and though some Jews stumbled, 



The Growth of the Gospel. 79 

and some Greeks were foolish, it soon proved 
itself to the various races of mankind God's 
saving power— till of all seeds the least and 
most unlikely had overtopped all other herbs — 
had outgrown the philosophies and supplanted 
the religions of the East and West, and sent 
out its branches to the world's end. 

II. So with communities : so with the history 
of religion in given regions or localities. In the 
year 1789, the crew of the ship Bounty turned 
their captain and officers adrift and carried the 
ship away. After many adventures, the nine 
surviving mutineers landed in the little island 
of Pitcairn, with the heathen wives they had 
brought from Tahiti, and some Tahitian men. 
Their first years passed in quarrels and feuds, in 
drunken brawls and deliberate murders, till, in 
1800, John Adams found himself the only man 
in all the island. His conscience was awakened 
by frightful dreams ; but though the island was 
cut off from all the world, happily he had a Bible 
and a Prayer-Book, which still remained from 
the stores of the old Bounty. By reading that 
Bible, he found how a sinner may obtain for- 
giveness ; and as the patriarch of the island, he 
set to work to instruct the children and the 
Tahitian women ; and such was his success, that 
when, in 18 14, Captain Beechey visited Pitcairn, 
he found it peopled by a race virtuous, religious, 
cheerful, and hospitable beyond all precedent — 



8o 



The M ustard Seed ; or, 



patterns of conjugal and filial affection, devot- 
ing the Sabbath entirely to reading and serious 
meditation and prayer, permitting no work to 
be done that day, and with a standard of truth 
so strict, that even irony was frowned on as a 
sort of falsehood ; and all this truth, probity, 
and mutual affection had sprung from the single 
mustard seed, the one copy of the Scriptures, 
to which the awakened conscience of John 
Adams went for consolation. 

Nearer home, but far out in the Western 
main, is a little island, round which for nearly 
half the year the Atlantic clangs his angry bil- 
lows, keeping the handful of inhabitants close 
prisoners. Most of it is bleak and barren, but 
there is one little bay rimmed round with silvery 
sand and reflecting in its waters a slope of ver- 
dure. Towards this bay, one autumn evening, 
1300 years ago, a rude vessel steered its course. 
It was a flimsy bark, no better than a huge bas- 
ket of osiers covered over with the skins of 
beasts ; but the tide was tranquil, and as the 
boatmen plied their oars, they raised the voice 
of psalms. Skimming across the bay, they 
beached their coracle and stepped on shore, one, 
two, three, as many as twelve or thirteen, and 
on the green slope built a few hasty huts and a 
tiny Christian temple. The freight of that little 
ship was the gospel, and the errand of the 
saintly strangers was to tell benighted heathen 



The Growth of the GosfieL 81 



about Jesus and His love. From the favoured 
soil of Ireland they had brought a grain of 
mustard-seed, and now they sowed it in Iona. 
In the conservatory of their little church it 
throve, till it was fit to be planted out on the 
neighbouring mainland. To the Picts with their 
tattooed faces, to the Druids peeping and mut- 
tering in their dismal groves, the missionaries 
preached the gospel. That gospel triumphed. 
The groves were felled, and where once they 
stood arose the house of prayer. Planted out 
on the bleak moorlands, the little seed became a 
mighty tree, so that the hills of Caledonia were 
covered with the shade; nor must Scotland ever 
forget the seedling of Iona, and the labours of 
Columba with his meek Culdees. And if God 
give the increase, who can tell to what mighty 
trees those little seedlings may grow, from that 
hardy nursery transplanted to Canada and 
Australia, to Calcutta and Amoy, to Caffraria 
and Old Calabar ? 

III. So with the rise and progress of religion 
in the individual soul. " The just shall live by 
faith " — a text so small, long latent in Luther's 
memory, and long dormant, when quickened by 
God's Spirit, became not only gladsome liberty 
to himself, but the germ of a glorious Reforma- 
tion. And so, " a word, a thought, a passing 
sentence, may prove to be the little seed which 
eventually fills and shadows the whole heart and 

F 



82 



The Mustard Seed; or, 



being, and calls all thoughts, all passions, all 
delights to come and shelter under it."* 

A great encouragement to those who are 
teaching others. Whether it be your Sabbath 
scholars or your own children, it is not so im- 
portant that they should commit to memory 
great quantities of Scripture, long chapters or 
long psalms, as that they should have indelibly 
engraven on their hearts a few of the most pre- 
cious portions, psalms like the xxiii. and ciii., 
hymns like " Rock of Ages" and " I lay my sins 
on Jesus," texts like those faithful sayings which 
proclaim the love of Gcd, the cleansing blood of 
Christ, the power of believing prayer. A tract 
in the pocket, a Testament in the trunk, is a 
good thing, and may lead to the happiest re- 
sults ; but as the youth goes away and leaves 
you, a text in the memory is better — some great 
saving truth, terse and simple as it occurs in the 
lively oracles, or as it has been inwoven in im- 
mortal verse or more immortal music, or as it 
has been embalmed and made for ever sacred 
by some tender association — some touching 
incident or earnest exhortation. When the set 
time comes — in the distant colony, in the tropic 
ship, in the house of bondage, serving the citizen 
of a far country, and envying the husks which 
the swine do eat — that faded but familiar truth 
may return upon his memory, and, as he pon- 
* AlfordL 



The Growth of the Gospel. 



23 



ders, long closed founts of feeling may reopen, 
till the resolve is made, " I will arise and go to 
my Father." 

And a great encouragement to those who are 
trying to find favour for any useful plan or good 
idea. As long as it remains in your own mind, 
it is the seed in the mustard pod ; but cast into 
the field, or the garden, it will grow. Thus 
David Nasmith's notion of a house to house 
visitation of the London poor has grown into 
those town and city missions which are the salt, 
the saving element, in our over-crowded centres. 
Thus the first Bible-woman has been repeated, 
till they are counted by hundreds. Thus John 
Pounds's little scapegrace, bribed by a hot 
potatoe to come for his daily lesson, has multi- 
plied into our ragged schools, with their thou- 
sands of teachers, and myriads of scholars. 
Thus the system of total abstinence in the hands 
of Father Matthew reduced the whisky-drinking 
of Ireland from twelve millions of gallons in one 
year, to not more than five millions. And thus 
any true and living thing will grow, if it gets but 
a good and honest soil, and is so happy as to 
receive its fair proportion of sun and shower. 

Which suggests our concluding thought — the 
treatment we ourselves should give the truths of 
God. An acorn on the mantel-piece, a dry 
bulb in a dark cupboard, a mustard seed in 
your pocket or a pill-box, will not grow. The 



8 4 



The Mustard Seed, &c. 



only crop you can hope for is from the seed 
which you cast into the ground, and take pains 
with, till it sends up first the tender blade, and 
by and by the branching stalk. So texts or 
truths in the memory, are acorns on the shelf, 
seeds in the pill-box. It is good to have them, 
but do not leave them there. Take out any one 
you like and plant it. Ponder the saying till it 
grows wonderful — till its meaning comes out, 
and you feel some amazement at its unsurmised 
significance. Ponder it, till, like the phosphor- 
escent forms of vegetation, the light of its ex- 
panding falls on other passages, and revelation is 
itself revealed. Ponder it, till the smallest of seeds 
becomes the greatest of herbs, and a brief maxim 
of heavenly wisdom develops in your conduct 
a beauty of holiness. Ponder it, till like the 
bulb taken out of the cupboard, it is no longer 
dead and dry, but with the scent of water at its 
roots, and looking forth at your lattice from its 
pedestal of amethyst or beryl, it warms with 
summer hues the wintry weather, and sends 
through all the hidden chambers of your heart 
exotic perfume, suggestions of joys which even 
now exist elsewhere, though outside and around 
the trees are stripped, and the world is cold. 




CHAPTER VII. 

LEAVEN ; OR, THE CIVILISING INFLUENCE OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

After comparing the gospel or the Church to 
a grain of mustard seed, the Saviour added this 
other parable : — u The kingdom of heaven is like 
unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in 
three measures of meal, till the whole was leaven- 
ed." At the first glance, it might seem as if this 
were just the same thought repeated ; but a little 
attention will show us that the underlying idea 
of each parable is distinct, and so the one makes 
an absolute addition to the lesson of the other. 

The mustard-tree is an organised body. It 
has a trunk and branches, it has leaves, it has 
fruit. It begins with a germ, and it goes on ex- 
panding. It requires sustenance, for it has life, 
and if it gets sustenance it grows. Like every 
plant, like every animal, it is an organism; 
unlike a stone, unlike a heap of sand, unlike 



86 



Leaven ; or, 



that handful of meal, it has life and limbs, 
vitality and growth. 

So the Church of Christ is a living and or- 
ganised whole, of which a tree, with its roots 
and branches, its fruit and its shadow, is an 
excellent emblem. This organism springs from 
that germ called the gospel. This little seed is 
sown in God's garden, and, quickened by the 
Holy Spirit, it springs up and grows. In Iona, 
the preaching of Columba springs up the Church 
of the Culdees. In Germany, the preaching of 
Luther springs up the Evangelical or Protestant 
community. In the world itself, the preaching 
of apostles, the grain of mustard-seed deposited 
by the fishermen of Galilee, springs up the 
truest, oldest, widest, of all fellowships — the 
Church of the First-born, whose names are 
written in heaven — that grandest of all societies, 
of which dimly or distinctly we think when we 
say, " I believe in the communion of saints." 

But leaven is no organism, and for that matter 
neither is meal. Leaven is the little mass of 
sour and fermenting paste which in other days, 
and before the employment of yeast, the baker 
used to put into his dough, till it spread through 
the entire batch, and changed the whole into the 
likeness of itself. And although in the Bible 
leaven is frequently used to denote hypocrisy 
or malice, there is no reason why it should not 
be used to denote any principle which spreads 



The Civilising ' Influence of 'Christianity. 87 

and penetrates, whether good or bad. And here 
there can be little doubt that it is intended to 
say, Christianity is a principle designed and 
fitted to influence the entire community. Al- 
though in the outset there may not be much of 
it, yet it has prodigious potency, and as it keeps 
on working it will more and more assimilate to 
its own nature all that is called society. It is 
not only the Christian who will bring to Christ 
the pagan or the profligate, but it is Christian 
truth, Christian feeling, Christian conduct, which 
will tell on the world's way of thinking and act- 
ing, and at last leave nothing in the whole lump 
of humanity which is not sensibly affected by 
this heaven-descended principle. 

If so, the purport of the two parables *is suf- 
ficiently distinct. The one describes the Church 
of Christ in its own separate identity and organic 
completeness, starting up from the soil of this 
world, yet not of it — every leaf and twig partak- 
ing the same nature, and in its surprising growth 
destined to overtop all competitors. The other 
describes Christianity as a power or principle — 
a little yeast or ferment to which God has given 
such potency, that it will go on permeating and 
assimilating the entire mass of humanity, till 
the whole is leavened. The one metaphor com- 
pletes the other. The tree grozvs, the leaven 
works. The tree is a distinct living organism, 
the leaven is a power or influence. The Church 



88 



Leaven; or. 



of Christ is the mustard -tree, the leaven is 
Christianity. Or, put it another way — If both 
the grain of seed and the leaven represent the 
gospel, in the one case we have the seed germi- 
nating and springing up in that separate, self- 
contained unity which we call the church of the 
saved — in the other, we have the potent and 
mysterious principle going out beyond itself into 
society, and materially affecting the world which 
surrounds the Church. 

Put into modern language, we have here the 
assertion, Christianity is the great civiliser. 
This is a truth to which more justice has been 
done by historians than by divines ; still it is 
truth. No doubt there have been civilisations 
which were not Christian — the Greek and 
Roman, for example, and the Chinese and 
Indian, if we may give so grand a name to a 
grotesque and puerile culture. And in our 
modern civilisation there may be elements which 
are not purely or pre-eminently Christian — which 
are not essentially Christian at all. There is a 
classical element, for example — and an artistic 
element, and a very powerful commercial ele- 
ment — which have all their .share in rescuing 
from barbarism, and which have all contributed 
to such refinement as the present age has 
reached. The great educator of the world is 
God himself, and the great text-book from which 
the lessons are taken, is the volume of His 



The Civilising Influence of Christianity. 89 

"Lively Oracles;" but there are pictures and 
object-lessons all round the walls — beasts, trees, 
volcanoes, geysers, large as life, pictures, statues, 
instruments of music ; and in the palaestra of 
actual existence the pupils are made to do a 
great deal in the way of moulding one another. 
Many of these pupils are very perverse, and 
many of the influences at work are intrusive and 
pernicious — not at all divine, but downright 
devilish ; still, the world which God has so 
loved, and for which He gave His Son, must 
never be abandoned to the wicked one ; and 
under its Divine Guide and Guardian it is in- 
teresting to notice the processes by which the 
gradual emancipation is going forward, and a 
groaning, but self-sold race, is being raised and 
restored to the liberty of sons of God. 

There are certain facts which will not be dis- 
puted : There is a Bible in the world, and there 
is also a Church ; but although all men do not 
accept the Bible out and out, nor do all belong 
to the household of faith, yet through that Bible, 
and through that Church, Christ is the Bene- 
factor of multitudes who nevertheless refuse to 
have "this Man to reign over them." 

Take, for instance, equity, shading off, as it 
does, into its kindred excellence, humanity. 
Says the apostle James, " Go to, ye rich men, 
weep and howl for your miseries that are come 
upon you. Behold the hire of the labourers, 



oo 



Leaven; or, 



who have reaped down your fields, which is of 
you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of 
them who have reaped are entered into the ears 
of the Lord of Sabaoth." And all throughout 
our Lord's discourses we find denunciations of 
those who devour widows' houses, and through- 
out the Old Testament prophets — those great 
preachers of righteousness — denunciations of 
those who grind the faces of the poor. And 
although there may be still sufficient fraud and 
rapacity, no one can conceive what Christianity 
has done for the poor and unprotected, who 
cannot throw himself back into the times before 
the advent, or who is not familiar with the con- 
dition of the dependent classes under Eastern 
despotisms. And it would have been the same 
in Europe, but Christianity stepped in. It said 
to the landed proprietor and the chieftain, " If 
you promise to pay, you must perform. If you 
take that man's time, or labour — if you take his 
ox or his ass — you must give him fair value in 
return. True, you are strong, and you call him 
your serf or vassal ; but he has a Lord para- 
mount as well as you, who is stronger than 
either, and before whose tribunal you both must 
stand." And thus, even in its most degenerate 
days, Christianity threw its shield over the poor 
and needy, and taking up the cause of him who 
had no helper, its leaven has so penetrated 
legislation, or rather we should say, has so pre- 



The Civilising Influence of Christianity. 91 

meated that opinion which is the source of all 
effective and enduring legislation, that now not 
only is there no serfdom in Europe, but the day- 
labourer is as secure of his wages as the Crown 
is secure of its revenues. 

" Do unto others as ye would that they should 
do unto you." This great gospel maxim has 
so infiltrated the mind of Europe, that it is 
current even amongst those who imperfectly 
practise it, and by its implied recognition of 
universal brotherhood, it is giving to the laws 
and to the ways of every land a complexion of 
fairness, of respect for one another's rights, for 
one another's feelings even, utterly unknown in 
lands where one race is clay and another por- 
celain, or one has descended from Bramah's 
head or arm, another from his toe. 

But if Christianity has thus supplied the place 
of a conscience to the world, so has it been the 
social heart, the great source of the world's com- 
passion and sympathy. What is to be done 
with our orphans ? Let them shift for them- 
selves, says Selfishness. What is to be done 
with our aged and invalid poor, and our im- 
beciles ? Let them die off, and the sooner the 
better, says Political Economy ; they are not in 
our plan, they spoil our calculations, they are 
very much in the way, and are best let alone. 
But if we let them alone, our religion won't let 
us alone. The poor and the outcast were taken 



02 



Leaven; or, 



up by Christ himself, and — " The poor ye always 
have with you" — were by Him transferred to 
the Church, when they should enjoy His bodily 
presence no longer. And not only has He made 
the care for their case a necessity of the Chris- 
tian life — it is not over a solitary or selfish meal 
that you pray His prayer, " Give us this day 
our daily bread ;" and when you try to shut out 
from your compassion the brother who has need, 
you so far shut out the love of God — but He has 
made it an inevitable prompting of the Christian 
spirit ; and whether it be Pastor Fliedner, with 
the Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, or the founders 
and supporters of our asylums for the orphan, 
for the idiot, for the incurable, or those who 
give their time to visit the sick, to instruct the 
ignorant, to raise up and restore the fallen, they 
are obeying an instinct as unknown to the 
polished Greek and sturdy Roman as it was to 
the phlegmatic Chinaman or effeminate Hindoo, 
but an instinct familiar to those whose own 
spirits have been melted by the matchless mani- 
festation of the Divine benevolence, and who 
have learned to pray, 

"As we to others mercy show, 
We mercy beg from Heaven." 

This Christian tenderness tells on the outside 
world. As a result of these two things in the 
midst of men — that great magazine of God's 



The Civilising Influence of Christicmity. 93 

mercies, the gospel, and that fund of actual 
loving-kindness which the Spirit of God main- 
tains in the minds of His people — as a result of 
these things, the world is far less harsh and 
cruel than it used to be. A little leaven has 
pervaded the whole lump, and many men who 
are not devout are kind, generous, humane. 
Living in an atmosphere filled more or less with 
Christian feeling, and impelled by the contagious 
example of Christian friends or kindred — con- 
strained by love to the men whom the love of 
Christ constrains— they are led on to do such 
noble deeds, and give such noble gifts, as would 
be no disgrace to Christian charity. 

Equity or fairness is a Christian grace — that 
considerateness which puts a man in his neigh- 
bour's place, and does as he would be done by : 
and so is tenderness, compassion, self-sacrifice 
in saving the lost and relieving the wretched : 
and as a third excellence, thoroughly Christian, 
we might have instanced Truth. Unfortunately, 
the Church of Rome has found it needful to 
" lie for God," and its frightful doctrine of "pious 
frauds" has occasionally received countenance 
in the controversial tricks and prophetic quack- 
eries of Protestant divines : but it is not for 
nothing that the awful apparition of Ananias 
aad Sapphira meets us so early in the Christian 
history ; and partly as a result of that solemn 
warning, and still more as the reflection of the 



04 



Leaven; or, 



whole spirit of the gospel, wherever there has 
been genuine piety there has always been a 
notable measure of truth and God-fearing up- 
rightness; and co-existent with this stricter vera- 
city within the Church there may be discerned 
a keener sense of honour in the world. There is 
more than enough of fraud and falsehood still ; 
but surely the number grows of those whose 
" word " is better than a bad man's " oath," and 
who, when they have sworn to their own hurt, 
stand by it. Even controversy is conducted 
with greater candour ; men are getting more 
courage to confess their errors or their ignorance ; 
and not only have statesmen been found bold 
enough to avow as their policy " a policy of 
peace," but wise enough to adopt a policy of 
openness and honesty. 

Not only are they the Christian ethics which 
have got diffused through the morals of society, 
but the other ingredients of the gospel have 
also told. If you were asking a company of 
believing men, "What is the greatest benefit 
which Christianity has conferred on you ? " one 
might answer, " New light. Whereas I once 
was blind, now I see. I see myself, lost and 
ruined, with a depraved nature and a soul 
destroyed by sin. And I see God. I see Him 
holy yet more than helpful : I see Him ' the just 
God and the Saviour,' infinitely pure, yet un- 
speakably compassionate, desiring my salvation, 



The Civilising Influence of Christianity. 95 

and doing all things in the way of pardon and 
assistance which are needful to secure it. New 
light." A second might say, " It is new life that 
I owe to the gospel. It has given me a new 
Friend in Jesus Christ, a new motive in the love 
of God, a new prospect in the hope full of 
immortality." And a third, in reply to the 
question, "What has Christianity done for you ?" 
might answer as truly, " It has given me a new 
nature. Things for which I once had no heart 
are now my element, and in that law of God I 
do delight which was once my terror and my 
task." Corresponding to such types of piety 
are the influences which Christianity exerts on 
those who have not yet come within its pale. The 
far regards and lofty aims of one high-hearted 
Christian, if they do not lift his neighbours to 
heaven, may at least raise them for a moment 
from the dust ; and the courage of one who has 
faith in God and no fears for the future will 
sometimes animate feebler spirits in the hour of 
danger : just as God's presence with the believer 
helps to make Him real and present to the 
worldling. Like the drop of essence which 
flavours the pitcher — like the flask of attar which 
scents the whole chamber — like the hidden 
leaven which gives to the three measures a new 
attribute ; though it is still a little flock, and the 
followers of Christ a mournful minority, the 
faith of this little Church keeps the world from 



o6 



Leaven; or, 



atheism, its blessed hope keeps the world from 
many a mad experiment, as well as from the 
demoralising blackness of despair, and its love, 
however limited, is a cheering, elevating in- 
fluence, which, in the face of all selfish and utili- 
tarian tendencies, maintains that sentiment which 
gives to society its meaning and its charm, and 
which, in the midst of materialistic influences, 
reminds it ever and anon of that higher sphere 
whence the sweet exotic comes. 

You see your calling, Christian brother. You 
are here to serve Christ and extend His king- 
dom Ye are the salt of the land, ye are the 
lights of the world, ye are the leaven which is 
to pervade and new-mould society. This end is 
so far answered when any man carries on his 
common work, his daily calling, on Christian 
principles. It is perhaps still more decidedly 
subserved when a man has a calling capable of 
being consecrated — as when the artist wields 
his pencil to exhibit the dangers and deformity 
of vice, the charms of domestic virtue, the 
majesty of Christian heroism — as when the man 
of letters employs his pen for the rebuke of 
popular evils, for the praise and protection of 
scriptural faith and piety. But it will also be 
subserved by those who, in the interests of 
heaven's kingdom, and in order to promote 
God's ascendancy, are steadily and unostenta- 
tiously employing the influence God has given. 



The Civilising Influence of 'Christianity. 97 



It was not only gold, but frankincense and 
myrrh, which the Eastern sages presented to 
the new-come Saviour. You may have little 
gold to give, but myrrh in the bundle, incense 
in the censer, a good man's influence when 
living, his memory when gone, will go far in the 
way of fostering worth and restraining evil. 
You have such influence ; use it. You are not 
a cypress, strict and straight up, with arms 
appressed and pointing all to heaven — like a 
hermit of the Theban desert, like some of the 
old English Puritans : your branches spread ; 
let those who come under your shadow — your 
friends, your children — let them there find 
pleasant fruits and leaves of healing. And the 
gospel which makes you so rich and strong, it 
is not a mere amulet or charm which you carry 
about for your own protection, but a blessing 
with which you are intrusted for the world's 
welfare. So do not hoard it. Do not conceal 
your convictions, but on right occasions enforce 
your belief and urge your principles ; and even 
though you may not in every instance succeed 
in saving a soul from death, it is something to 
dispel a single prejudice or prevent a single sin. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE LITERARY ATTRACTIONS OF THE BIBLE. 

God made the present earth as the Home of 
Man ; but had He meant it as a mere lodging-, 
a world less beautiful would have served the 
purpose. There was no need for the carpet of 
verdure, or the ceiling of blue ; no need for the 
mountains, and cataracts, and forests ; no need 
for the rainbow, no need for the flowers. A big^ 
round island, half of it arable, and half of it pas- 
ture, with a clump of trees in one corner, and a 
magazine of fuel in another, might have held and 
fed ten millions of people ; and a hundred islands, 
all made on the same pattern, big and round, 
might have held and fed the population of the 
globe. But man is something more than the 
animal which wants lodging and food. He has 
a spiritual nature, full of keen perceptions and 
deep sympathies. He has an eye for the sub- 
lime and the beautiful, and his kind Creator has 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 99 

provided man's abode with affluent materials for 
these nobler tastes. He has built Mont Blanc, 
and molten the lake in which its image sleeps. He 
has intoned Niagara's thunder, and has breathed 
the zephyr which sweeps its spray. He has 
shagged the steep with its cedars, and besprent 
the meadow with its king-cups and daisies. He 
has made it a world of fragrance and music, — ■ 
a world of brightness and symmetry, — a world 
where the grand and the graceful, the awful 
and lovely; rejoice together. In fashioning the 
Home of Man, the Creator had an eye to some- 
thing more than convenience, and built, not a 
barrack, but a palace, — not a Union-workhouse, 
but an Alhambra ; something which should not 
only be very comfortable, but very splendid and 
very fair ; something which should inspire the 
soul of its inhabitant, and even draw forth the 
" very good" of complacent Deity. 

God also made the Bible as the Guide and 
Oracle of Man ; but had He meant it as a mere 
lesson-book of duty, a volume less various and 
less attractive would have answered every end. 
A few plain paragraphs, announcing God's own 
character and His disposition towards us sinners 
here on earth, mentioning the provision which 
He has made for our future happiness, and indi- 
cating the different duties which He would have 
us perform, — a few simple sentences would have 
sufficed to tell what God is, and what He would 



ioo The Literary Attractio?is of the Bible, 

have us to do. There was no need of the 
picturesque narrative and the majestic poem, — 
no need of the proverb, the story, and the psalm. 
A chapter of theology, and another of morals ; 
a short account of the Incarnation and the great 
Atonement, and a few pages of rules and direc- 
tions for the Christian life, might have contained 
the vital essence of Scripture, and have supplied 
us with a Bible of simplest meaning and small- 
est size. And in that case the Bible would have 
been consulted only by those rare and wistful 
spirits to whom the great Hereafter is a subject 
of anxiety, who are really anxious to know what 
God is, and how they themselves may please 
Him. But in giving that Bible, its Divine Author 
had regard to the mind of man. He knew that 
man has more curiosity than piety, more taste 
than sanctity ; and that more persons are 
anxious to hear some new, or read some beau- 
teous thing, than to read or hear about God and 
the Great Salvation. He knew that few would 
ever ask, What must I do to be saved ? till they 
came in contact with the Bible itself ; and, 
therefore, He made the Bible not only an instruc- 
tive book, but an attractive one, — not only true, 
but enticing. He filled it with marvellous inci- 
dent and engaging history ; with sunny pictures 
from Old-World scenery, and affecting anecdotes 
from the patriarch times. He replenished it 
with stately argument and thrilling verse, and 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible, toi 



sprinkled it over with sententious wisdom and 
proverbial pungency. He made it a book of 
lofty thoughts and noble images, — a book of 
heavenly doctrine, but withal of earthly adapta- 
tion. In preparing a guide to immortality, In- 
finite Wisdcm gave not a dictionary, nor a gram- 
mar, but a Bible — a book which, in trying to 
reach the heart of man, should captivate his 
taste ; and which, in transforming his affections, 
should also expand his intellect. The pearl is 
of great price ; but even the casket is of exquisite 
beauty. The sword is of ethereal temper, and 
nothing cuts so keen as its double edge ; but 
there are jewels on the hilt, an exquisite inlay- 
ing on the scabbard. The shekels are of the 
purest ore ; but even the scrip which contains 
them is of a texture more curious than any 
which the artists of earth can fashion. The 
apples are gold ; but even the basket is silver. 

In speaking of the literary excellence of the 
Holy Scriptures, we are aware of a twofold dis- 
advantage. Some have never looked on the 
Bible as a readable book. They remember how 
they got long tasks from it at school, and spelled 
their arduous way through polysyllabic chapters 
and joyless genealogies. And in later life they 
have only heard it sounded forth monotonously 
from the drowsy desk, or freezing in the atmo- 
sphere of some sparse and wintry sanctuary. So 
irksome and insipid has every association made 



102 The Literary Attractions of the Bitre. 

it, that were they shut up in a parlour with an 
old directory, and an old almanack, and an old 
Bible, they would spend the first hour on the 
almanack, and the next on the directory, and 
would die of ennui before they opened the Bible. 
They have got at home a set of their favourite 
classics, and on a quiet evening they will take 
down a volume of Chaucer or Spenser, or even 
Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or an Elzevir 
Virgil, or a Grenville Homer, and read at it till 
long beyond their time of rest ; but to them the 
Bible is no classic. They do not care to keep 
it in some taking or tasteful edition, and they 
would never dream of sitting down to read it as a 
recreation or an intellectual treat. And then there 
are others in a happier case to whom that Bible 
is so sacred — who have found it so full of solemn 
import, and to whom its every sentence is so 
fraught with divine significance, that they feel it 
wrong or revolting to read it with the critic's 
eye. They would rather peruse it on their 
bended knees, praying God to show them the 
wonders in His Word, than, with the scholar's 
pencil in their hand, ready to seize on each 
happy phrase and exquisite figure. They would 
rather peruse it in the company of Luther or 
Leighton, than along with Erasmus or Grotius. 
We can understand the feelings of each. But 
we trust that both will bear with us a little 
whilst we endeavour to show that if no book be 



The Litei'cuy Attractions of the Bible. 103 



so important as the Bible, so none is more in- 
teresting, and that the book which contains 
most of the beautiful is the one which must 
ever remain the standard of the good and the 
true. 

And here we would only add one remark 
which it is important to bear in memory. The 
rhetorical and poetical beauties of Scripture are 
merely incidental. Its authors wrote, not for 
glory or display — not to astonish or amuse 
their brethren, but to instruct them and make 
them better. They wrote for God's glory, not 
their own ; they wrote for the world's advantage, 
not to aggrandise themselves. Demosthenes 
composed his most splendid oration in order to 
win the crown of eloquence ; and the most ela- 
borate effort of ancient oratory — the " Panegy- 
ric" to which Isocrates devoted fifteen years — 
was just an essay written for a prize, How diffe- 
rent the circumstances in which the speech on 
Mars Hill was spoken ; and the farewell sermon 
in the upper chamber at Troas ! Herodotus 
and Thucydides composed their histories with 
a view to popular applause ; and Pindar's fiery 
pulse beat faster in prospect of the great Olym- 
pic gathering and the praises of assembled 
Greece. How opposite the circumstances in 
wnich the Seer of Horeb penned his faithful 
story, and Isaiah and Jeremiah poured forth 
their fearless denunciations of popular sins ! 



104 The Litei-ary Attractions of the Bible. 



The most superb of modern historians confesses 
the flutter which he felt when the last line of his 
task was written, and he thought that perhaps 
his fame was established. A more important 
history concludes : " These things are written 
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God ; and that believing, ye might 
have life through his name." And some of you 
will remember the proud finale in which the 
Roman lyrist predicts for himself immortal cele- 
brity.* Alongside of his eloquent but egotistic 
vaticination, you cannot do better than read the 
last words of Israel's sweet singer, — " His name 
shall endure for ever ; His name shall be con- 
tinued as long as the sun ; and men shall be 
blessed in Him : all nations shall call Him 
blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of 
Israel, who only doeth wondrous things ; and 
blessed be his glorious name for ever ; and let 
the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen 
and Amen. The prayers of David the son of 
Jesse are ended." 

Remembering then that the Bible contains 
no ornamental passages, nothing written for 
mere display, that its steadfast purpose is, 
" Glory to God in the highest," and the truest 

* " Exegi monimentum sere pereimius. 
.... Usque ego postera 
Crescam laude recens," &c. 

— Hor. lib. iii. Od. 30. 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 105 

blessedness of man, — we repeat that that Bible 
abounds in passages of the purest beauty and 
stateliest grandeur, all the grander and all the 
more beautiful because they are casual and un- 
sought. The fire which flashes from the iron 
hoof of the Tartar steed as he scours the mid- 
night path is grander than the artificial firework ; 
for it is the casual effect of speed and power. 
The clang of ocean as he booms his billows on 
the rock, and the echoing caves give chorus, is 
more soul-filling and sublime than all the music 
of the orchestra ; for it is the music of that main 
so mighty that there is a grandeur in all it does, 
— in its sleep a melody, and in its march a 
stately psalm. And in the bow which paints 
the melting cloud there is a beauty which the 
stained glass or gorgeous drapery emulates in 
vain ; for it is the glory which gilds beneficence, 
the brightness which bespeaks a double boon, 
the flush which cannot but come forth when 
both the sun and shower are there. The style 
of Scripture has all this glory. It has the grace- 
fulness of a high utility ; it has the majesty of 
intrinsic power ; it has the charm of its own 
sanctity ; it never labours, never strives, but, 
instinct with great realities and bent on blessed 
ends, it has all the translucent beauty and un- 
studied power which you might expect from its 
lofty object and all-wise Author. 

There is no phenomenon in nature so awful 



lo6 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 

as a thunder-storm ; and almost every poet 
from Homer and Virgil down to Dante and 
Milton, or rather down to Grahame or Pollok, 
has described it. In the Bible, too, we have a 
thunder-storm, the 29th Psalm — the description 
of a tempest, which, rising from the Mediter- 
ranean, and travelling by Lebanon, and along 
the inland mountains, reaches Jerusalem, and 
sends the people into the temple-porticoes for 
refuge. And, besides those touches of terror in 
which the geographical progress of the tornado 
is described, it derives a sacred vitality and 
power from the presence of Jehovah in each 
successive peal. " The voice of the Lord is on 
the sea : the God of glory thundereth : the Lord 
is on the mighty sea. The voice of the Lord is 
powerful, the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. 
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars ; yea, 
the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He 
maketh them also to skip like a calf ; Lebanon 
and Sirion like a young unicorn. The voice of 
the Lord divideth the flames of fire. The voice 
of the Lord shaketh the wilderness ; the Lord 
shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice 
of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and dis- 
covered! the forests : and in his temple doth 
every one speak of his glory. The Lord sitteth 
upon the water torrent : yea, the Lord sitteth 
King for ever. The Lord will give strength 
unto his people :" (and now the sun shines out 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 107 



again ;) " the Lord will bless his people with 
peace." * 

Amongst those who have expressly written on 
the Sublime, it is agreed that the most thrilling 
spectacle is one whose obscure outline or vague 
presence at once suggests the supernatural. Of 
this sublime in terror, the fourth of Job supplies 
an acknowledged instance : — 

"A thing, too, was imparted to me secretly, 
Mine ear received a whisper with it. 
In tumults of night-visions, 
When deep sleep falls on men, 
Panic came on me, and horror, 
And the multitude of my bones did shake, 
A spirit passed before my face, 
The hair of my flesh stood up : 
It stood — but I could not discern its form : 
A figure before mine eyes : 
— Silence — and I heard a voice, 
1 Shall a mortal be righteous before God ? 
Shall a man be pure before his Maker?' " 

But perhaps the poetic beauty in which the 
Bible most excels all other books is description 
of the world around us. A better idea of the 
poetic susceptibility was never given, than when 
John Foster called it physiopathy, " the faculty of 

* Over many of the psalms it sheds a flood of new signifi- 
cance when the reader understands their mechanism, as in the 
case of many it has been disclosed by the labours of Lowth, 
Horsley, Hengstenberg, and others. It was one morning in his 
house at Dundee, that a friend dear and ever memorable, 
Robert M'Cheyne, showed us the geographical structure of 
this 29'.h Psalm. And certainly it enhances the meaning of this 



io8 The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 



pervading all Nature with, one's own being, so 
as to have a perception, a life, an agency, in all 
things." "If you observe a man of this order, 
though his body be a small thing, completely 
invested with a little cloth, he expands his being 
in a grand circle all around him. He feels as 
if he grew in the grass and flowers and groves ; 
as if he stood on yonder distant mountaintop, 
conversing with clouds, or sublimely sporting 
among their imaged precipices, caverns, and 
ruins. He flows in that river, chafes in its cas- 
cades, smiles in the water-lilies, frisks in the 
fishes. He is sympathetic with every bird, and 
seems to feel the sentiment that prompts the 
song of each ; and from this ability to transfuse 
himself into every object around him, in a cer- 
tain sense he inherits all things." To which we 
would only add, that besides this poetic sym- 
pathy with Nature the sacred writers seem to 
have possessed a still purer perception of what 
Nature is. They not only could transfuse their 
own life into the landscape, but they could dis- 
cern how much of the living God is there. And 
instead of that material semblance which a Claude 

majestic ode when we conceive the spectator-psalmist as stand- 
ing with the awe-struck multitude in the temple-porch, watching 
the march of the thunder-storm as it advances from the Mediter- 
ranean or "mighty" sea, and imagining its progress from Leba- 
non, adown the range of Hermon, and the course of the Jordan, 
till it darkens over the wilderness and reaches Jerusalem and 
bursts in a water-flood around themselves. 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 109 

or a Rembrandt might project on his canvas, or 
Virgil or Shenstone might embody in his verse, 
they inhaled Jehovah's breath and hearkened to 
Jehovah's voice, and received into their adoring 
bosoms as much of Jehovah's life as lingers in our 
defaced and fallen world. Hence it comes to 
pass, that the Book which contains by far the 
brightest and most vivacious landscape — the 
holiest and happiest view of the things around 
us, is the Word of God. Seen in His own light, 
and delineated by His own pencil, the moun- 
tains "skip," the seas "clap hands," the little 
hills "rejoice," and the valleys "sing." The 
Bible landscape has a limpid freshness, as viewed 
by an eye which carnality has never dimmed, or 
rather that loving and observant eye which grace 
has made young again. It needs no Dryads to 
people its woodlands, no Oreads to flit over its 
mountains, no Naiads to give mirth to its waters 
or music to its streams ; for a higher animation 
fills them, and every chiming brook and flutter- 
ing spray, every zephyr and every blessed sound, 
is a note in God's own anthem, — "Praise the 
Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps : 
fire and hail : snow and vapours : stormy wind 
fulfilling his word : mountains and all hills ; 
fruitful trees and all cedars : beasts and all 
cattle : creeping things and flying fowl : kings of 
the earth and all people : princes and all judges 
of the earth : both young men and maidens : 



I io The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 

old men and children : let them praise the name 
of the Lord ; for his name alone is excellent ; 
his glory is above the earth and heaven." 

But instead of collecting illustrative passages 
from what may be called the pastoral and de- 
scriptive poetry of Scripture, we shall quote one 
which, whilst a graphic description, like most 
kindred portions of Holy Writ, owes its sublimity 
to its moral power ; and we quote it the rather, 
because our own translation does not bring out 
its entire significance. It is the twenty-eighth 
chapter of Job, and the question is, Where is 
Wisdom to be found ? and, What is the abode 
or hiding-place of Understanding ? Is it a de- 
posit hidden in the bowels of the earth ? — a 
treasure for which we must ransack the caverns 
underneath, or rummage in the rifted rock ? Is 
it a secret for which we must bribe the grave ? 
or which death alone can whisper in the ear ? 
And so it commences with a magnificent ac- 
count of the miner's doings underground : — 

" Truly there is a mine for the silver, 
And a place for the gold so fine : 
Iron is dug up from the earth, 
And the earth pours forth its copper. 
Man digs into darkness, 
And explores to the utmost bound 
The stones of dimness and death shade ; 
He breaks up the veins from the matrice, 
Which, unthought of, and underfoot, 
Are drawn forth to gleam among mankind. 
The surface pours forth bread, 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 1 1 1 



But the subterranean winds a fiery region. 

Its stones are the sapphires' bed, 

And it hides the dust of gold. 

It is a path which the eagle knows not, 

Nor has the eye of the vulture scanned it. 

The lion's whelp has not tracked it, 

Nor the ravening lion pounced on it. 

The miner thrusts his hand on the sparry ore, 

And overturns the mountains by their roots. 

He cuts a channel through the rock, 

And espies each precious gem. 

He binds up the oozing waters, 

And darts a radiance through the gloom, 

Eut, oh, where shall Wisdom be found ? 

And where is the place of Understanding ? 

Man knows not its source, 

For it is not to be found in the land of the living. 

The sea says, ' It is not in me ;' 

And 1 Not in me,' echoes the abyss. 

Solid go'd cannot be given for it, 

Nor silver be weighed for its purchase. 

It cannot be bought for the ingot of Ophir, 

For the precious onyx or the sapphire. 

The burnished gold and crystal cannot equal it, 

Nor golden trinkets match it. 

Talk not of corals or pearls, 

For the attraction of wisdom is beyond rubies. 

The topaz of Ethiopia cannot rival it, 

Nor the purest bullion barter it. 

Whence, then, cometh Wisdom ? 
And where is the place of Understanding ? 
Hid from the eyes of all living, 
And unseen by the fowls of the air, 
Destruction and death say, 
' We have heard its fame with our ears.' 
God understands its track ; 
He knows its dwelling-place ; 
For to the ends of the earth He sees 
And under all heaven surveys. 



1 1 2 The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 



When He weighed out the air 
And meted out the water ; 
When He fixed the course of the rain 
And the path of the hurricane ; 
Then did He eye it and proclaim it : 
He prepared it and searched it out, 
And unto man He said, 

* Behold ! the fear of the Lord, that is Wisdom, 
And to depart from evil is Understanding.'"* 

It would consume all our space were we tran- 
scribing from the Prophets and the Psalms those 
passages of grandeur which make the sacred 
text so awful and august ; and of that class we 
shall give no more. But perhaps the sublime, 
though the highest order of literary effort, is not, 
after all, the most popular. Were it put to the 
world at large, we should, probably, find that the 
books most men like best are those which are 
less exalted above the every-day level, and whose 
simple incidents, and cheerful glimpses, and hu- 
man pathos, bring them home to every one's 
comprehension and feeling. In this sort of nar- 
rative that world's book, the Bible, abounds. 
Do you ask for tenderness ? " And Ruth said 
to her mother-in-law, Entreat me not to leave 
thee, nor to return from following after thee ; 
for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou 
lodgest I will lodge ; thy people shall be my 

* Some lines of the above may be slightly paraphrased ; but 
the version is essentially the same as that of Dr Mason Good, 
with modifications from Dr Lee and others. 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 1 13 

people, and thy God my God : where thou diest 
will I die, and there will I be buried. The 
Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but 
death part thee and me." Do you ask for pa- 
thos ? "And Cushi said, Tidings, my lord the 
king ; for the Lord hath avenged thee this day 
of all them that rose up against thee. And the 
king said unto Cushi, Is the young man, Absa- 
lom, safe ? And Cushi answered, The enemies 
of my lord, the king, and all that rise up against 
thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is. 
And the king was much moved, and went up to 
the chamber over the gate, and wept ; and as he 
wept thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, 
my son Absalom ! Would God I had died for 
thee, O Absalom, my son, my son." Or do you 
ask for natural, simple, and affecting narrative ? 
"A certain man had two sons ; and the younger 
of them said to his father, Father, give me the 
portion of goods that falleth to me. And he di- 
vided unto them his living. And not many days 
after the younger son gathered all together, and 
took his journey into a far country, and there 
wasted his substance with riotous living. And 
when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine 
in that land ; and he began to be in want. And 
he went and joined himself to a citizen of that 
country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed 
swine. And he would fain have filled his belly 
with the husks which the swine did eat ; and no 

H 



1 14 The Lite?-ary Attractions of the Bible. 

man gave unto him. And when he came to 
himself he said, How many hired servants of 
my father's house have bread enough and to 
spare, and I perish with hunger ! I will arise 
and go to my father, and will say unto him, 
Father, I have sinned against heaven, and be- 
fore thee, and am no more worthy to be called 
thy son ; make me as one of thy hired servants. 
And he arose, and came to his father. But 
when he was yet a great way off his father saw 
him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on 
his neck, and kissed him. And the son said 
unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven, 
and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son. But the father said unto his 
servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it 
on him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes 
on his feet ; and bring hither the fatted calf, and 
kill it ; and let us eat and be merry ; for this my 
son was dead and is alive again, and was lost 
and is found.'' 

We could very willingly have extended these 
remarks to other species of composition, and 
would have liked to show particularly how many 
models of eloquent argument and engaging dis- 
course are contained in the New Testament. 
But on the wide field of Revelation, with its in- 
tellectual opulence, we forbear to enter. We 
can easily understand how the Bible was one of 
the four volumes which always lay on Byron's 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 115 

table ; and it would be easy to fill a volume 
with the testimonies, witting or unwitting, which 
painters, sculptors, orators, and poets, have ren- 
dered to the most thought-suggesting book in all 
the universe. It never aims at fine writing. It 
never steps aside for a moment for the sake of a 
felicitous expression or a good idea. It has only 
one end — to tell the world about God and the 
great salvation ; and yet the wonder is, that it 
has incidentally done more to supply rhetoric 
with powerful and happy diction, and literature 
with noble thoughts and images, and the fine 
arts with memorable subjects, than perhaps all 
other books that have been written. The world's 
Maker is the Bible's Author, and the same pro- 
fusion which furnished so lavishly the abode of 
man, has filled so richly and adorned so bril- 
liantly the Book of man. 

Just as that Bible is the great storehouse and 
repertory of intellectual wealth, so we must add 
that its vital truth is the grand source of intellec- 
tual ftozver. When Sir Samuel Romilly visited 
Paris immediately after the first French Revolu- 
tion, he remarked, " Everything I saw convinced 
me that, independently of our future happiness 
and our sublimest enjoyments in this life, reli- 
gion is necessary to the comforts, the conve- 
niences, and even the elegances and lesser plea- 
sures of life. Not only have I never met with a 



1 1 6 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 

writer truly eloquent who did not at least affect 
to believe in religion, but I never met with one 
in whom religion was not the richest source of 
his eloquence." And we are persuaded that in 
things intellectual the rule will hold, that piety 
is power. We are persuaded that no produc- 
tions of genius will survive to the end of all 
things in which there is not something of God ; 
and we are farther persuaded, that no book can 
exercise a lasting ascendancy over mankind on 
which His blessing has not been implored, and 
in which His Spirit does not speak. Of all the 
powers and faculties of the human mind, the 
noblest is the one which God has created for 
Himself ; and if that reverential or adoring fa- 
culty do not exist, or if it be by suicidal hands 
extirpated, the world will soon cease to feel any 
force in the man who has lost his faith in God. 
The stateliest compartment in this human soul 
is the one which, in creating it, Jehovah reserved 
for His own throne-room and presence-chamber ; 
and however curiously decorated or gorgeously 
furnished the other compartments be, if this be 
empty and void, it will soon diffuse a blank and 
beggarly sensation over all the rest. And thus, 
whilst the Voltaires and Rousseaus, of Atheist 
memory, are waxing old and vanishing from the 
firmament of letters, names of less renown, but 
more religion, brighten to a greater lustre. So 
true is it that no man can long keep a hold of 



The Literary Attractions' of the Bible. 1 17 



his fellow-men, unless he himself first has hold 
of God. 

But if a sincere and strenuous Theism be thus 
important — such natural faith in God as upbore 
the wing of Plato in his long and ethereal flights, 
or bulged the Saxon thews of Shakspeare in his 
mightiest efforts, incomparably more prevalent 
is that intellectual prowess which a scriptural 
faith produces. He is no Unknown God whom 
the believer in Jesus worships, and it is no or- 
dinary inspiration which that God of light and 
love supplies to His servants. It wouM be easy 
to enumerate one genius after another which 
the gospel kindled, if it did not create. That 
gospel, beyond all controversy, was our own 
Milton's poetic might. It was the struggling 
energy which, after years of deep musing and 
wrapt devotion, after years of mysterious mutter- 
ing and anxious omen, sent its pyramid of flame 
into old England's dingy hemisphere, and poured 
its molten wealth — its lava of gold and gems, 
fetched deep from classic and patriarchal times, 
adown the russet steep of Puritan theology. It 
was the fabled foot which struck from the sward 
of Cowper's mild and silent life a joyous Castalia 
— a fountain deep as Milton's fire, and like it 
tinctured with each learned and sacred thing 
it touched in rising, but soft and full as Siloah's 
fount, which " flowed fast by the oracle of God." 
And that gospel was the torch which, on the 



1 1 8. The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 

hills of Renfrewshire, fired a young spirit,* — 
himself both sacrifice and altar-pile,- — till Britain 
spied the light, and wondered at the brief but 
brilliant beacon. But uhy name the individual 
instances ? What is modern learning, and the 
march of intellect, and the reading million, but 
one great monument of the gospel's quickening 
power ? Three or four hundred years ago the 
classics were revived ; at the same time the 
gospel was restored. Digging in the Pompeii 
of the middle age, Lorenzo and Leo found the 
lamps in which the old classic fires had burned ; 
but there was no oil in the lamps, and they had 
long since gone out. For models of candelabra 
and burners there could not be better than Livy, 
and Horace, and Plato, and Pindar ; but the 
faith which once filled them — the old Pagan 
fervor — was long since extinct, and the lamps 
were only fit for the shelf of the antiquary. But 
it was then that, in the crypt of the convent? 
Luther, and Zuingle, and Melancthon, observed 
a line of supernatural light, and with lever and 
mattock lifted the gravestone, and found the 
gospel which the Papist had buried. There it 
had flamed, " a light shining in a dark place," 
through unsuspected ages — unquenchable in its 
own immortality — the long-lost lamp in the 
sepulchre. Jupiter was dead, and Minerva had 
melted into ether, and Apollo was gray with eld, 
* Poliok. 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 1 19 

and the most elegant idols of antiquity had gone 
to the moles and the bats. But there is One 
who cannot die and does not change — and the 
Fountain of Scriptural Learning is He who is 
also the Fountain of Life — the Alpha and the 
Omega — Jesus the Son of God. From His 
gospel it was that the old classic lamps, when 
filled with fresh oil, were kindled again ; and at 
that gospel it was that Bacon, and Locke, and 
Milton, and Newton, and all the mighty spirits 
of modern Europe, caught the fire which made 
them blaze, the meteors of our firmament, the 
marvels of our favoured time. 

Should any one read these lines who is 
ambitious to be the lasting teacher or the exten- 
sive light of society — to paint, or think, or sing, 
for the students of a future age, let him remember 
that nothing can immortalise the works of 
genius if there be no gospel in them. The facts 
of that gospel are the world's main stock of 
truth — the fire of that gospel is the only Pro- 
methean spark which can ignite our dead truths 
into quenchless and world-quickening powers. 

For practical and devotional purposes, we 
could desire no better version of the Bible than 
our own truthful and time-hallowed translation. 
But for those purposes to which we have now 
been adverting, — for the sake of its intelligent 
literary perusal, we have .sometimes wished that 



120 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 



either in the originals or in English, some 
judicious editor would give us, each in a 
separate fasciculus, the several contributions of 
each sacred penman. As it is, with the sixty-six 
volumes of the Bible all compressed into a single 
tome, we are apt to regard them, not only as 
alike the Holy Scriptures, which they are, but 
as contemporary compositions, which they are 
not. We forget that, in point of time, there is 
the same interval between Moses and Matthew, 
as there is betwixt the close of the canon and 
the compilation of the Augsburg Confession. 
And, with each portion comminuted into those 
little paragraphs called verses, we are apt to lose 
sight of the characteristic style of the various 
compositions. An epistle looks like a poem, 
and a history reads like a collection of adages 
and apophthegms. But allowing one book to 
contain the Minor Prophets, and another the 
General Epistles, there would still remain up- 
wards of twenty inspired penmen whose writings 
might, much to their mutual illustration, be 
bound up in separate volumes, and preserved 
in their individual identity. We should thus 
have in one volume all that Moses wrote, and in 
another, chronologically arranged, all the writ- 
ings of Paul. One volume might contain all the 
psalms of David: another, those psalms (nearly 
as numerous) which were indited by Moses, and 
Asaph, and others. In one cover might be 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 121 

bound up the Gospel, the Epistles, and the 
Apocalypse of John ; and in another, that divine 
Song, those Confessions of a converted philoso- 
pher, and that ancient " Wealth of Nations," 
which are the inspired bequest of the Imperial 
Solomon. And under such an arrangement 
might we not hope that books, usually read in 
chapters or smaller morsels, might sometimes be 
read continuously, — taken down from the shelf, 
as any attractive book would be taken, on a 
leisure evening, and read through at a single 
sitting? Might we not hope, in such a case, 
that whilst those who now read the Old and 
New Testaments would read them still, some 
who at present do not read the Bible might be 
tempted to read Paul, Moses, and Isaiah ? And 
is it too sanguine to expect that, as the searching 
of the Scriptures and sacred knowledge thus 
increased, some who first resorted to the book 
for literary entertainment might learn from it 
the lessons which make wise to life everlasting? * 
At all events, theology has not yet turned to 
sufficient account the Bible's marvellous diver- 
sity. We know how opposite are the turns, and 
how various the temperaments of different peo- 
ple, and how unequal their capacities. One has 

* The idea thus thrown out has since been realised. Each 
book of the Bible can now be obtained separately in the issues 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, or in those of Messrs 
Bagster. 



122 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 



a logician's intellect, and delights in a dialectic 
subtilty. Another has a prompt intuition, and 
deprecates as so much bamboozlement every 
ingenious or protracted argument. Some have 
the ideal faculty so strong, that they never un- 
derstand a proposition rightly till it sparkles as 
a sentiment ; poet-wise, their eyes are in the 
apex ; they cannot descry matters of fact and 
homely truths, which creep along the ground or 
travel on all-fours ; but in order to arrest a 
vision so sublime as theirs, thoughts must spread 
the wings of metaphor, and soar into the zenith ; 
whilst others are so prosaic, that they are of- 
fended at all imagery, and grudge the time it 
takes to translate a trope or figure. Some 
minds are concrete, and cannot understand a 
general statement till they see a particular ex- 
ample. Others are so abstract, that an illustra- 
tion is an interruption, and an example a waste 
of time. Most men love history, and nearly all 
men live much in the future. Some minds are 
pensive, some are cheerful ; some are ardent, 
some are singularly phlegmatic. And had an 
angel penned the Bible, even though he could 
have condescended to the capacity of the lowli- 
est reader, he could not have foreseen the turn 
and fitted the taste of every child of Adam. And 
had a mortal penman been employed, however 
versatile his talent, however many-faced his 
mind, he could not have made himself all things 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 123 



to his brethren, nor produced styles enow to 
mirror the mental features of all mankind. In 
His wisdom and goodness the Most High has 
judged far better for our world ; and using the 
agency of forty authors — transfusing through the 
peculiar tastes and temperaments of so many 
individuals (and these " men of like passions 
with ourselves,") the self-same truths, the Spirit 
of God has secured for the Bible universal adap- 
tation. For the pensive, there is the dirge of 
Jeremiah and the cloud-shadowed drama of Job. 
For the sanguine and hopeful, there sounds the 
blithe voice and there beats the warm pulse of 
old Galilean Peter. And for the calm, and con- 
templative, the peacefully-loving, there spreads 
like a molten melody, or an abysmal joy, the 
page — sunny, ecstatic, boundless — of John the 
Divine. The most homely may find the matter 
of fact, the unvarnished wisdom and plain sense, 
which is the chosen aliment of their sturdy un- 
derstandings, in James's blunt reasonings ; and 
the most heroic can ask no higher standard, no 
loftier feats, no consecration more intense, no 
spirituality more ethereal, than they will find 
in the Pauline Epistles. Those who love the 
sparkling aphorism and the sagacious paradox 
are provided with food convenient in the Pro- 
verbs ; and for those whose poetic fancy craves 
a banquet more sublime, there are the dew of 
Hermon and Bozrah's red wine,— the tender 



124 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 



freshness of pastoral hymns, and the purple tu- 
mult of triumphal psalms. And whilst the his- 
torian is borne back to ages so remote that gray 
tradition cannot recollect them, and athwart 
oblivious centuries, in nooks of brightness and 
in oases of light sees the patriarch groups, clear, 
vivid, and familiar as the household scenes of 
yesterday, — there is also a picture sketched for 
the explorers of the future. For whilst the 
Apocalyptic curtain slowly rises, — whilst the 
seven thunders shake its darkness palpable, and 
streaks of glory issue through its fringe of fire, 
the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven ; 
and gazing on the pearly gates, and peaceful 
streets, and bowers of sanctity, our planet can 
scarce* believe that she is gazing on herself, — 
that this is old Mother Earth grown young again, 
— that this vision of holiness and bliss is nothing 
more than Paradise restored — that "new" but 
ancient "earth in which dwelleth righteousness*" 
But in order rightly to appreciate this literary 
diversity of the Bible's several books, it is essen- 
tial to remember the plenary inspiration of the 
Bible collective. Imagine the case of an accom- 
plished evangelist. Suppose there were a mis- 
sionary endowed with the gift of tongues, and 
called to ply his labours in different places at 
successive periods. He goes to France, and, 
addressing its vivacious inhabitants, he aban- 
dons the direct and sober style of his fatherland ; 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 125 



every utteranee is antithesis ; every gem of 
thought is cut brilliant-wise ; and the whole 
oration jigs on gay, elastic springs. He passes 
thence to Holland, and in order to conciliate its 
grave burghers his steady thoughts move on in 
sober procession, trim, concinnate, old-fashioned, 
orderly. Anon he finds himself amidst a tribe 
of Red Indians ; and instantly his imagination 
spreads pinions of flame, and, familiar with 
thunder-water and burning mountains, his talk 
is to the tune of the tempest. And ending his 
progress in Arabia or Persia, through the fantas- 
tic sermon skip shadowy antelopes or dream- 
like gazelles ; whilst each interstice of thought 
is filled by a voluptuous mystery, like the voice 
of the darkling nightingale as it floats through 
air laden with jasmine or roses. And thus, " all 
things to all men," this gifted evangelist wins 
them all ; whereas, had he spoken like an Ori- 
ental to the Red Indian, or like a Persian to the 
Hollander, he would have offended each, and 
would have been a barbarian to all. The 
Teacher is one — the same Evangelist every- 
where. The truth, the theme is one — over and 
over again the same glorious gospel. Nay, the 
substance of each sermon is essentially one ; for 
it is a new forth-pouring from the same fountain 
— another yearning from the same full heart. 
But to suit successive hearers the rhythm alters, 
the tune is changed. 



126 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 



Such is the principle on which the Great 
Evangelist has acted. When inditing sermons 
for the world, such is the principle on which the 
Divine Spirit has proceeded. Speaking to men, 
He has used the words of men. When on the 
two tables God wrote the Ten Commandments, 
He did not write them in the speech unutterable 
of the third heavens — He wrote them in Hebrew 
letters, Hebrew words, and Hebrew idiom ; and 
had it so pleased Him, He might have given all 
the Sriptures in the self-same way. Employing 
no mortal pen whatever, from the top of Sinai 
he might have handed down the one Testament, 
and from the top of Olivet the other — the whole, 
from Genesis to Revelation, completed without 
human intervention, and on amaranthine leaves 
engraven in Heaven's own holograph. And in 
such a case there would have been no dispute 
as to the extent of inspiration ; there would have 
been no need that, like the electrometers of the 
meteorologist, theologians should invent tests of 
its intensity, nicely graduated from the zero of 
Superintendence up to the fulness of Suggestion. 
But Infinite Wisdom preferred another way. 
Inspiration He made the counterpart of the In- 
carnation ; and as in the Incarnate Mystery we 
have, without mutual encroachment and without 
confusion, very God and very man, so in theop- 
neustic Scripture we have a book, every sentence 
of which is truly human, and yet the whole of 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 127 

which is truly divine. Holy men spake it, but 
holy men spake and wrote it as they mere moved 
by the Holy Ghost. . And just as when God sent 
His Son into the world, He sent Him not in the 
fashion of an angel, nor even in the fashion of 
a glorified and celestial man, but in all points 
like His brethren ; so when He sent into the 
world His written word, it came not ready 
written with an angel's plume, but with reeds 
from the Jordan it was consigned to paper from 
the Nile, every word of it Hellenistic or Hebrew, 
and yet every word none the less heavenly. 
And though the unlettered disciple, who in the 
identity of the ultimate Author forgets the di- 
versity of the intermediate scribes — though he 
loses less than the dry critic, who only recognises 
the mortal penman — that student alone will get 
the full good of His Bible who recognises the 
parallel facts — its perfect and all-pervasive divin- 
ity, its perfect and all-investing humanity. Or, 
to sum it up in the vivid words of Gaussen : 
" As a skilful musician, called to execute alone 
some masterpiece, puts his lips by turns to the 
mournful flute, the shepherd's reed, the mirthful 
pipe, and the war-trumpet, so the Almighty God, 
to sound in our ears His eternal word, has select- 
ed from of old the instruments best suited to re- 
ceive successively the breath of His Spirit. Thus 
we have in God's great anthem of revelation the 
sublime simplicity of John ; the argumentative, 



1 28 The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 

elliptical, soul-stirring energy of Paul ; the 
fervour and solemnity of Peter ; the poetic gran- 
deur of Isaiah ; the lyric moods of David ; the 
ingenuous and majestic narratives of Moses ; 
the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon. 
Yes, it was all this— it was Peter, Isaiah, Mat- 
thew, John, or Moses ; but it was God." " And 
such ought to be the word of Jehovah — like 
Emmanuel, full of grace and truth — at once in the 
bosom of God and in the heart of man — power- 
ful and sympathising — celestial and human — 
exalted, yet humble — imposing and familiar — 
God and man." 

But here a compunctious thought comes over 
us. In the previous survey it seems as if we had 
gone, so many of us, to view a famous palace, 
and we have stood on the lawn in front, or looked 
up from the quadrangle, and told its towers and 
marked its bulwarks, and sketched some of its 
ornaments ; but however commanding the ele- 
vation, however graceful the details, and how- 
ever interesting the various styles, after all the 
glory is within. No doubt, there is a loveliness 
even in the letter of Scripture ; but there is life 
for our souls in its divine significance. Reader, 
do not rest till you are introduced to the interior. 
That Book which God has made the monument 
of the great redemption, and where Pie has put 
His own perpetual Shekinah, do you choose it 
as the gymnasium where you may " nourish a 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible, 129 

youth " truly " sublime the castle where, in a 
world of impiety and an age of peril, you may 
find entrenchment for your faith and protection 
for your principles ; the sanctuary at whose 
oracle you may find answers to your doubts and 
light upon your path ; the spirit's home, whither 
your affections shall every day return, and where 
your character shall progressively ennoble into a 
conformity with such a royal residence ? 

Allow us, therefore, as a supplement to these 
remarks, to entreat you to peruse the Bible itself. 
With prayer, with expectation, with eyes alert 
and open, read it ; in your most tranquil retire- 
ment read it ; and when a few of you, who are 
friends like-minded, come together, read it ; 
search it, sift it, talk about it, talk with it. And 
as he thus grows mighty in it, we promise each 
earnest Bible-student two rewards — it will make 
him both a wiser and holier man. 

Wiser : for the sayings of God's Word are 
solid. There is a substance, which you must 
have noticed, cast on the sea-shore, the medusa, 
or sea-nettle, as some sorts of it are called ; an 
object rather beautiful as its dome of amber 
quivers in the sun. And a goodly size it often 
is, — so large at times that you could scarcely lift 
it : but it is all a watery pulp, and if you were 
carrying it home or trying to preserve it, the 
whole mass would quickly trickle out of sight 
and leave you nothing but a few threads of sub- 

I 



130 The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 

stance. Now, most books are like the marine 
medusa ; fresh stranded, newly published, (as the 
expression is,) they make a goodly show ; but 
when a few suns have Sfrbne on them, the crys- 
tal jelly melts, the glittering cupola has vanished, 
and a few meagre fibres in your memory are all 
the residue of the once popular authorship. If 
you ever tried it, you must have been struck 
with the few solid thoughts, the few suggestive 
ideas, which survive from the perusal of the 
most brilliant of human books. Few of them 
can stand three readings ; and of the memora- 
bilia which you had marked in your first peru- 
sal, on reverting to them you find that many of 
them are not so striking, or weighty, or original 
as at first you fancied. But the Word of God is 
solid; it will stand a thousand readings; and the 
man who has gone over it the most frequently 
and the most carefully, is the surest of finding 
new wonders there. And just as the pearls of 
Scripture retain their intrinsic worth ; as not- 
withstanding the frowsy head-gear they have 
garnished, the dull discourses they have adorned, 
they beam brighter than ever when the hand of 
a Vinet, or Chalmers, or Hall has arranged them 
anew into a coronet of sanctified taste and ge- 
nius : so he among sages is the wealthiest man 
who has detected, and appropriated, and tho- 
roughly possessed himself of the largest number 
of Bible sayings,— the merchantman who, seek- 



The Literary Attractions of the Bible. 131 

ing goodly pearls, has searched for them on this 
exhaustless strand. 

And holier : for though we have hitherto 
spoken of the Bible very much as if it were a 
human book, you cannot be long versant with 
it till you find that it is something more. Like 
Tabor, it is a " mountain apart." Among the 
books of this world it is isolated, unique, pecu- 
liar ; and the farther up you get, the more ac- 
quainted you become with human books, and 
the more alongside of them you study the Book 
of God, the more amazed you will be at its out- 
standing elevation, its world-commanding pre- 
eminence. And just as in scaling a high moun- 
tain it needs no chemistry to analyse the air and 
inform the pilgrim that it is free from impurities ; 
as every breath which paints a purer crimson 
on his cheek, and sends a tonic tide through all 
his suppling frame, woufd tell him its salu- 
brity : so it needs no argument, no analysis, 
to persuade a spiritual mind that the air of 
heaven, the breath of God, is here. In his holier 
feelings as he reads, in the godly zeal and joy- 
ful strenuousness which requite each mounting 
footstep, with instinct sure his regenerate nature 
hails the congenial inspiration. And just as on 
Tabor's summit, when from heaven saints in 
snowy garments came down, and from Christ 
His own glory came through, it needed no re- 
fracting prism or condensing lens to assure 



i3 2 The Literary Attractions of ihe Bible 

them that it was a body of more than earthly 
brightness which they were gazing upon : so, 
dear reader, when a text is transfigured, when 
the Holy Spirit in the Word lets out its grace 
and glory, it will need no Paley nor Butler to 
prove that the Wisdom and the Power of God 
are there, but, radiant with emitted splendour, 
and dazzling your admiring eyes, in God's own 
light you will see it to be God's own Word. 
Nor can we wish for you a better wish than that 
thus you may be often surprised and over- 
whelmed. Yes, though your lot should be cast 
in the very midst of a noisy capital, and in the 
meridian of this man-wasting, money-making 
age, may you often find your Sabbath, and your 
place of prayer, and your Bible, " a mountain 
apart." In blissful bewilderment may you for- 
get the fascinations of earth and the pleasures 
of sin, and only wake up to find yourself alone 
with the Master. And none shall less grieve 
than he whom you have kindly accompanied 
thus far, if the literary attractions of the Book 
be in this manner merged and superseded in 
charms more spiritual — in attractions which, if 
they draw you to the Bible, will also draw you 
to the Saviour, and at last to heaven. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE ILLUMINATED BIBLE AND THE LIVING 
EPISTLE. 

BEFORE the days of printing, the copyists some- 
times took great pains with their manuscripts, 
and Bibles were then elaborately embellished. 
Traced in silver and gold and brilliant colours, 
occasionally executed on tinted parchment, the 
mere letters were often a gorgeous picture ; and 
such illuminated manuscripts will always awaken 
the astonishment and delight of the tasteful 
antiquarian. 

We do not print our Bibles in silver and gold ; 
nor have we verses marked out from the others 
by their vermilion ink or bolder character. 
And yet, we have sometimes thought that 
every careful reader can illuminate his own 
copy as he proceeds. The book is all bright 
with passages which at one time or another 
have stirred or strengthened him ; it is all 



134 The Illuminated Bible 



radiant with texts which have aroused, or re- 
buked, or consoled him. On this verse he 
heard a sermon which he never can forget. This 
chapter is associated with some affecting event 
in his domestic history : and here is a paragraph 
which gave rise to a dialogue or meditation, 
ever memorable in his religious career. 

Yet, were a hundred such illuminated Bibles 
compared, it would be found that in no two of 
them is the same set of passages marked and 
made prominent. Some may coincide ; and a 
few emphatic sentences may be common to all : 
but, according to individual peculiarities or 
providential circumstances, it will turn out that 
portions fraught with glory to one eye, are 
obscure or ordinary to every other. 

To take two instances. Suppose that each 
man were to mark in vermilion the verse that 
first convinced him of sin, or first made him 
anxious for the saving of his soul. In the Bible 
of the Apostle Paul, the tenth command would 
be inscribed in red letters ; for, as he tells us, " I 
had not known sin, except the commandment 
had said, Thou shalt not covet." In the Bible 
of Alexander Henderson, it would be, " He that 
entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but 
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief 
and a robber ; " for that was the shaft which 
pierced the conscience of the unconverted min- 
ister. In the Bible of the Ironside soldier, the 



and the Living Epistle. 



135 



rubric would be found at Ecclesiastes xi. 9 ; for 
it was there that the bullet stopped, which but 
for the interposing Bible, would have pierced 
his bosom ; and when the battle was over, he 
read, " Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and 
let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, 
and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in 
the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that 
for all these things God will bring thee into 
judgment." 

Or, suppose that each were to mark in golden 
letters the text which has been to him the gate 
of heaven ; the text through whose open lattice 
a reconciled God has looked forth on him, or 
through whose telescope he first has glimpsed 
the Cross. The Ethiopian chamberlain would 
mark the fifty-third of Isaiah ; for it was when 
reading about the Lamb led to the slaughter, 
that his eye was directed to the Lamb of God, 
who taketh away the sin of the world, and he 
went on his way rejoicing. The English mar- 
tyr, Bilney, would indicate the faithful saying, 
" Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners, of whom I am chief ; " for it was in 
sight of these words that the burden fell from his 
back which fasts and penances had only rendered 
more weighty. There was " a stricken deer " 
who had long been panting for the water-brooks, 
but he had yet found no comfort ; when, one 
day, listlessly taking up a Testament, it opened 



136 The Illuminated Bible 



at the words, u Whom God hath set forth to be 
a propitiation through faith in his blood, to 
declare his righteousness for the remission of 
sins that are past," and instantly he realised 
the sufficiency of the atonement, and embraced 
the gospel : and, doubtless, the Bard of Olney 
would signalise by the most brilliant memorial 
the spot where the Sun of Righteousness first 
shone into his soul. — " Now unto the King 
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, 
be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen." 
These were the words which instantly converted 
into a living temple the calm and stately mind 
of Jonathan Edwards ; and we may be sure 
that,— -like Jacob, who, at Luz, would always see 
lingering the light of the ladder, — every time he 
returned to the passage, even in his most 
cursory perusal, the devout theologian would 
perceive a surviving trace of that manifestation, 
which into his vacant, wistful soul brought " the 
only wise God," and in glorifying that God gave 
him an object worthy of the vastest powers and 
the longest existence. 

Such is the divine variety of Scripture ; and 
thus from the stores of religious biography 
might be compiled a sort of histoiical commen- 
tary, showing what service in the way of 
"doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction 
in righteousness," the different passages have 
done. It would be found that in this quiver 



and the Living Epistle, 1 3 7 



there are hundreds of arrows which have 
pierced the conscience and convinced of sin. 
It would be found that from this tree of life 
many leaves have dropped, and proved effectual 
to the healing of such wounds. It would be 
found that in this garden there hardly grows an 
herb, but some visitor has been regaled by its 
beauty or revived by its fragrance ; and those 
which have not been sweet to the taste, have, in 
their very bitterness, yielded a salutary tonic. 
How many a text should we find invested with 
its true and touching legend ! This was the 
lamp which lighted such a pilgrim through that 
ominous eclipse ; and this was the hidden 
manna which, in the howling wilderness, restored 
his soul. Here is the smooth stone with which 
he struck down that terrible temptation, and 
here is the good sword with which he cut off 
its head. Here is the harp on which he dis- 
coursed sweet music when God gave him songs 
in the night ; and there is the staff with which 
he was comforted when he walked through the 
valley. 

An illuminated Bible makes an illustrative 
reader ; and if, in your private perusal, you 
come ever and anon on passages made dear and 
memorable by their bearing on your personal 
history, in your own turn you will, in some mea- 
sure, supply that commentary which, of all 
others, is the greatest desideratum, — a legible 



'38 



The Illuminated Bible 



Christian, — an epistle of Christ that may be 
known and read of all men. 

Perhaps our reader is a young man. Perhaps 
he is a young man of enthusiasm and energy. 
In exuberant health, and with spirits briskly 
bounding, he has the prospect not only of living 
long, but living largely — a man who will feel in 
every fibre all the influences of the coming age, 
and who will be himself no mean influence in it. 

Brother, look before you. " Wherewithal 
shall a young man cleanse his way ?" In this 
abundance of life, and this measure of ability, 
God has given you a solemn trust. You cannot 
help telling on others for good or evil. And 
when a few years are past, you will have done a 
great deal to deepen the perdition, or to heighten 
the bliss, of yourself and others. 

Methinks we hear you say, " I don't want 
to be vicious ; nay, I would rather be uncom- 
monly virtuous. I would like to be a better 
man than most of your so-called Saints. I am 
sick of their affectations and hypocrisies. I 
cannot bear their cant. I want to be in every 
action sincere and earnest, — every atom true. I 
cannot fill up a ready-made formula : I cannot 
stow myself away in the stiff exuviae of a mis- 
shapen antiquity. I must be original, indepen- 
dent, real. I shall make my own model, and 
then I shall make myself." 

By all means be genuine ; nay, by all means 



and the Living Epistle* 



139 



be original. But, on the part of a creature, what 
is the truest originality ? Is it not the closest 
copying of perfection ? that is, the most implicit 
imitation of the Creator's originals ? When 
Phidias or Praxiteles took a block of marble, 
did he say to himself, " Now, I shall make anew 
thing under the sun : — I shall make a figure 
which can suggest to the beholder nothing that 
moveth upon the face of the earth or in the 
waters under the earth .-—something so novel, 
that it has never entered into the heart of man 
to conceive it, and nobody will guess where the 
model was found ?" Had he said this, he would 
have produced an original of that sorry sort 
which we call an oddity, — something very gro- 
tesque and ungainly, — something like an African 
fetich or a Hindoo pagod. But the great artist 
said, " I shall make, as near as possible, a per- 
fect man. Gathering up hints of strength and 
symmetry wherever I can find them, I shall de- 
voutly endeavour to realise that exquisite model 
which was in the eye of the Divine Artist him- 
self and, with the humility of genius, content 
to copy, — limb by limb, and lineament by linea- 
ment, there came out from the dead rock the 
most unique of all originalities, — a perfect figure, 
a glorified humanity, — a vision of power and joy 
which makes us understand how very good, once 
on a time, was this material frame, — how fear- 
fully and wonderfully made at first, — how wonder- 



140 The Illuminated Bible 



ful and fearful the Resurrection may see it all 
again. 

The Belvidere Apollo is the most unique and 
original of sculptures, because it is the most 
earnest and successful of imitations. As far as 
he could catch sight of it, the artist kept con- 
stantly in view the model supplied by the Cre- 
ator ; and it is by combining so skilfully every 
fragment of peculiar beauty or vigour which 
came in his way, and by copying these so faith- 
fully, that he has realised such a splendid con- 
ception. 

Now, making one proviso — remarking that all 
genuine goodness is spontaneous — that it is ex- 
cellence followed for its own sake, not mimicked 
for admiration's sake — you will find that that 
goodness will turn out the most original \ not 
which makes its own model, or strikes out its 
own style, but which most closely copies Per- 
fection. This book supplies such a model. It 
exhibits a Pattern-Man, — a wearer of our intel- 
lect and will and affections, who never spoke a 
word that was not the right one, and who never 
did a right deed, so that even He Himself could 
have done it better. This peerless Pattern, — 
this Man so elevated, yet so tender, —so loyal to 
God, yet so loving to those around Him, — so 
separate from sin, yet so void of sanctimonious- 
ness, — the Word sets before you, and God says, 
Be ye followers of Christ. Walk as Christ also 



and the Living Epistle. 



141 



walked. Let the mind be in you which was in 
Christ Jesus. And a few sublime spirits, made 
generous by the Spirit of God, have been seized 
with a blessed ambition, and not because men 
would admire them, but because they were 
smitten by goodness so charming, they have 
gazed on it, and pondered it, and imbibed it, 
till they were sensibly changed into the same 
image, and men felt, u There you go, so noble, 
so lovely. We know where you have been : you 
could not have attained an excellence so charm- 
ing, had not Jesus Christ once been in the world, 
and had you not somehow been brought in con- 
tract with Him." 

The most polished Englishman of the last 
century was Philip Dormer Stanhope, the fourth 
Earl of Chesterfield. High-born and well-bred, 
clever, eloquent, and witty, and endowed with a 
large amount of natural amenity, he was bent 
on distinction. To dazzle his contemporaries 
was the business of his life. He was a man who 
made his own model. From the speeches of 
Cicero, from the epigrams of Martial, from the 
saloons of Paris and Versailles, he gleaned the 
several ingredients of classic grace and modern 
refinement, and sought to combine them in the 
courtier, the statesman, and orator. He had no 
God. In the shrine where the Most High should 
be, there was a dim outline which looked very 
like a colossal Stanhope carrying a young Ches- 



142 



The Illuminated Bible 



terfield in its arms ; but, unless this mixture of 
self-idolatry and son-worship deserve the name, 
there was no religion in the man. He had his 
reward. At a levee, or in a drawing-room, he 
moved "the admired of all admirers." Few 
made such formidable speeches in Parliament. 
None uttered so many brilliant sayings in society. 
He got ribbons, plaudits, diplomatic appoint- 
ments, the smiles of the fair, the envy of his 
peers ; everything except true human affection ; 
everything except the approbation of God and 
good men. Should any one wish to repeat the 
man, the mould is still extant. It will be found 
in Lord Chesterfield's " Letters to his Son ;" — a 
book of which our great moralist said, in effect, 
that " it inculcates the morals of a profligate 
with the manners of a dancing-master." But 
before taking more trouble, it is well to know the 
result. At the close, he confessed that his life 
had been as joyless as it had been selfish and 
hollow : " I have recently read Solomon with 
a kind of sympathetic feeling. I have been as 
wicked and as vain, though not as wise as he : 
but now I am old enough to feel the truth of his 
reflection, 4 All is vanity and vexation of spirit/ " 
Repartees sparkled on his dying lips, but all 
was dreary within, all was darkness ahead. 
The fame for which he lived, expired before 
himself ; and now truth declines to write his 
epitaph, and virtue has no garlands for his grave. 



and the Living Epistle. T43 



Still a boy, while this old worldling lay dying, 
William Wilberforce soon grew up, and the 
grace of God made him a Christian. That is, 
it taught him to live not to himself, but to the 
glory of God. It taught him to worship. It 
showed him that he was not his own proprietor ; 
that he had no right to make his own enjoyment 
his chief pursuit ; and that he must put all his 
faculties at God's disposal. In the Bible he 
found the model on which God would have him 
form his character. He studied it. He prayed 
over it. He watched himself, and struggled 
with his evil tendencies. God's Spirit strength- 
ened him, and gave him wonderful self-conquest. 
Retaining all his natural elasticity, his wit, his 
bright fancy, his melodious voice and fluent 
speech, — his random hilarity was exchanged for 
conscientious kindness, and all his gifts of mind 
and station were devoutly laid at the feet of his 
Redeemer. With his pen he expounded to the 
highest classes that system of vital piety which 
Whitefield and Wesley had already preached to 
the populace ; and carrying it to the dinner- 
tables of Clapham, and the evening assemblies of 
Piccadilly, many who fancied religion too severe 
in the sermons of Bishop Porteus or the strictures 
of Hannah More, confessed to its loveliness in 
the life of Mr Wilberforce. Then, in his public 
career, — keeping himself on purpose "pure," — 
avoiding office, never using for personal ends the 



144 The Illuminated Bible 



vast ascendancy over others which his fascinat- 
ing goodness gave him, any more than the pres- 
tige of his mighty Yorkshire constituency ; alike 
on the floor of St Stephen's and on the platform 
of Freemasons' Tavern, he consecrated to every 
humane and Christian cause " a persuasive and 
pathetic eloquence, chastened by a pure taste, 
varied by extensive information, enriched by 
classical allusion, sometimes elevated by the 
more sublime topics of Holy Writ— the thoughts 
and the spirit 

'That touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire.'"* 

How much the individual advocacy of one so 
loved and honoured effected for Missionary and 
Bible Societies, it would be difficult to tell ; but 
it is harldy metaphor to say that Africa wept 
when he died. His country will never forget 
him : for although poets, warriors, and states- 
men in numbers repose under the roof of the 
Abbey, England recognises no originality more 
illustrious, no heroism more patriotic, than his 
who led the campaign of humanity so long, and 
who achieved the abolition of the Slave Trade. 

The model on which Wilberforce was formed 
still exists. The reader will find it in the book 
which we have sought to recommend ; and if, in 
exploring that book, he finds thoughts to which 
no one yet has done justice, philanthropic sugges- 

* Lord Brougham. 



and the Living Epistle. 



*45 



tions which no one has yet carried out, features 
of excellence which no one yet has exhibited, he 
will just repeat the experience of a thousand 
predecessors, and still will leave a virgin-field for 
the researches of all who follow. 

The Book of Nature is not exhausted. Gutta 
percha and chloroform, coal-gas and steam- 
carriages, sun-pictures and electric telegraphs, 
have all come to light within the last few years ; 
and greater things than these are coming. All 
that is wanting is an explorer who distinctly un- 
derstands what it is that he desires, and who 
will accept the answer when Nature flings it at 
his feet. 

The Book of Revelation is not exhausted either, 
In our own day it has yielded treasures long la- 
tent ; and we have seen such things come out of 
it as, "The Astronomical Discourses," and " Eli- 
jah the Tishbite." Within the memory of some 
now living, it has yielded Sabbath Schools 
and Foreign Missions, Prison-visiting, Ragged 
Schools, and Convict-reformation. It has eman- 
cipated our slaves. It has ransomed from igno- 
rance and bondage our factory children. It has 
sent Scripture-readers and Evangelists into all 
our towns. It has given our higher classes kind- 
er and fairer feelings towards their less favoured 
brethren. And scantily as it is even yet ad- 
mitted into the faith and affections of Christen- 
dom, it is the benevolence of the Bible which at 

K 



146 The Illuminated Bible 



this moment keeps its spirit from souring, and 
it is the "blessed hope" of the Bible which 
keeps its heart from breaking : just as the exist- 
ence of that Bible is a pledge that its merciful 
Creator has in reserve for the world a long Sab- 
bath of peace and righteousness. 

Yet, like the good gifts which Nature retained 
in her bosom, till the sage discovered them and 
handed them forth to his fellows, all these great 
thoughts and good schemes were treasures hid 
in the Scripture, till Chalmers and Krummacher, 
Raikes and Sadler, Sarah Martin and Mrs Fry, 
found them out and brought them forth. But 
the book is not exhausted ; and if you really 
wish to serve your fellows, this Mentor will show 
you the way. With its guidance, you will find 
that the true " excelsior " is humility, and that, 
like Pascal, Edwards, and Vinet, the believer on 
his knees sees further than the philosopher on tip- 
toe. You will find that the book, which, among 
its affectionate exponents, has yielded char- 
acters so distinct, yet so excellent, as Arnold 
and Buxton, Howard and Williams, Martyn and 
M'Cheyne, can make you as superior to your 
present self, as these men were superior to ordi- 
nary mortals. In one word, you will find that 
in things intellectual, he is likely to be the 
mightiest master who knows the Bible best, and 
most meekly trusts in God ; and in things 



and the Living Epistle. 147 



moral and philanthropic, — in conduct and char- 
acter, — he is likely to be the greatest original 
who is the closest copyist — the most implicit 
imitator of that Second Adam who is the great 
theme of the Bible Revelation. 



CHAPTER X. 



HINTS TO THE BIBLE STUDENT. 

Near the Franconia Mountains in America 
there died a very aged man in August 1852. 
Shrewd, vigorous, and sturdy, he lived without 
God in the world, fourscore and four years, — a 
grasping, passionate, and domineering man, a 
thorough-going worldling. But the sudden 
death of an old acquaintance startled him. He 
felt that it was time for himself to get ready, and 
by an exertion, almost incredible, he learned to 
read the Testament. " Yes, it was hard work," 
as he said to a friend. " At my time of life to 
begin with the letters and learn to read, was 
hard work. Sometimes I could not make out 
the sense. But I would cry to the Almighty to 
help me, and then I would try again, and He 
would help me to find it out. So that, now, I 
have read the Testament through eight times, 
and here I am in the Epistles of Peter, the ninth 



Hints to the Bible Student. 



149 



time ; and oh ! " he added, with streaming eyes, 
" it is glory and praise in my heart." He was a 
sagacious and energetic old man, and, as he said 
himself, " I wanted a religion that should be 
good and strong, and that would keep by me, 
and help me when I came to die. So I cried to 
the Almighty, and He gave me a heart for the 
blessed Testament. I found out how to read it, 
and then I read in it that Jesus Christ made the 
world, and the rivers, and the mountains. And 
then I began to pray to Him, that He would 
give me a new heart ; and He gave it to me. 
And I read, that when He lived on earth, He 
healed the sick and the blind, and was good to 
the poor ; and then I knew that He would be 
kind to me ; and He forgave me, and gave me 
a new heart." It was quite true. The change 
on his harsh and rugged nature was very won- 
derful ; and as he said to the great American 
Statesman, who was his brother-in-law, " I have 
had done for me, Daniel, what neither you nor 
all the great men in the world could do for me ; 
I have got a new heart." And, returning to his 
home, Mr Webster said, "Wonderful things 
happen in this world, and one of them is, that 
John Colby has become a Christian."* 

When the reader is prompted by such a 
powerful motive, the Bible is sure to be abun- 
dantly interesting, and it is hardly needful to 

* See a recent tract of the American Tract Society, 



150 Hints to the Bible Student. 



give rules for its profitable perusal. But, if we 
do not mistake, most well-disposed persons wish 
that they carried to the Book a warmer enthu- 
siasm, and sat down to it with a keener relish. 
They know its divine authority. They feel how 
solemn is its claim on their attention. They 
would not be happy to let days or weeks pass 
without a portion read. And yet they regret 
that their Bible-reading is so mechanical ; that 
it is so often a tedium and a task-work ; and 
altogether they feel guilty and uncomfortable at 
their treatment of the Word of God. 

We may assume that it is not for want of in- 
trinsic interest or importance, that the Bible 
proves dull or distasteful to any reader. And 
for the sake of those who would like to enjoy it 
more, we would offer a few plain suggestions. 

1. The very copy of the Bible which you use, 
is a matter of some moment. A man of letters 
will read our English epic in the smallest size 
and sorriest type, rather than not read it at all ; 
but if he possess the Bard of Paradise in a wor- 
thy garb,— if his edition be a learned luxury, — 
a delight for the eyes to look upon, he will be 
ready to return to it, and by casual peeps as well 
as stated perusals, he will be apt to grow mighty 
in Milton. So with the Jews, ancient and 
modern. Their transcripts of the Law are pro- 
digies of penmanship, and apart from all other 
value, would be worth collecting as caligraphic 



Hints to the Bible Student. 151 

wonders. In like manner, as one means of en- 
hancing the value of the Book, would it not be 
well to get an attractive copy ? an edition so fair 
and bright, that its very beauty would coax you 
to return, and, instead of straining your eyes over 
blurred and blotted columns, the clear and ex- 
pressive type, like the recitation of an articulate 
speaker, would " give the sense, and cause you 
1 to understand the reading ?"* 

2. But in order to understand the meaning, 
you must take advantage of every help. There 
is a Geography of the Bible, — an Archaeology of 
the Bible, — a Natural History of the Bible ; and 
it is ignorance of these which makes many por- 
tions so insipid. For example, the Acts of the 
Apostles read without a map, even if they convey 
some lessons to the heart, must remain a chaos 
in the memory. But if, instead of its starting 
points and stations all merging in one another, 
— if instead of fancying Corinth and Colosse, 
both towns of Greece, and Antioch and Athens, 
adjacent villages, — if the route of the apostle 
resolve into geographical distinctness, it will not 
only be intensely interesting to follow him from 
place to place, and mark the successive stations 
where the gospel was planted ; but it will 
materially enliven your perusal of the Epistles, 
when you think of the localities where the 
Roman, Corinthian, Philippian, and Thessa- 

* Nehemiah viii. 8. 



152 Hints to the Bible Student, 

Ionian converts dwelt — the first fruits of Euro- 
pean heathendom ; or when you call up the 
circumstances connected with the Galatian, 
Ephesian, and Colossian churches, — half Heb- 
rew, half Hellenist. In like manner, some 
knowledge of Assyrian and Medo-Persian history 
is essential to a full command of the Old Testa- 
ment prophecies ; and not only are Amos and 
Obadiah new books when read among the for- 
saken rock-eyries of Petra, but Jonah, Nahum, 
and Habakkuk, and many portions of the larger 
prophets are full of enigmas, the solutions of 
which have only lately been dug from under the 
earth-mounds of Mesopotamia. Even the know- 
ledge of an Eastern custom is instant light on 
the corresponding fact or saying. When you see 
a Syrian flock following the shepherd, and 
answering to his call, you remember, " My sheep 
hear my voice, and they follow me ; " and when 
you see the herdsman bringing home to the 
village at the close of day, the oxen and asses, • 
with which he was intrusted, and once he is 
within the gate leaving them to themselves, for 
he knows that they will find their own way 
through the streets, and all seek their respective 
stables, — you understand Isaiah's words, "The 
ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's 
crib ; but Israel doth not know, my people doth 
not consider." Were the climate, the seasons, 
and the husbandry of the Holy Land, carefully 



Hints to the Bible Student. 



153 



noted by some competent observer, they would 
throw fresh light on many a Scripture ; and even 
the little which is known of its Natural History, 
has dispelled many a difficulty. In the siege of 
Samaria, we are told that, " an ass's head was sold 
for fourscore pieces of silver, and a cab of dove's 
dung for five pieces of silver," * and many have 
wondered why this last should be sold at all : 
but when we know that it is the bulbous root of 
. the Star of Bethlehem t which got this name, 
and which was often used for food, the wonder 
ceases. People used to think the coneys of 
Solomon the same as our rabbits, which are in- 
deed " a feeble folk," but which do not " make 
their houses in the rock." Now that the coney 
h ascertained to be the Daman or Hyrax, % — a 
shy defenceless creature, which lurks among the 
cliffs of the mountains, and darts into its den at 
the least approach of danger, the words of Agur 
acquire their full significance. When Solomon 
says, " Go to the ant, thou sluggard ; consider 
her ways, and be wise : which, having no guide, 
overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the 
summer and gathereth her food in the harvest 
there can be little doubt that he ascribes a hoard- 
ing forethought to the ant. But as no European 
species is known to lay up stores, it has been 
usual to understand the passage as an accommo- 

* 2 Kings vi. 2. 5. t Ornithogahun umbellaium* 

% Hyrax Sy 7- incus. 



154 Hints to the Bible Student. 



dation to a popular impression. It may be so; but 
in Asia there is at least one store-gathering 
species. "In June 1829," says Colonel Sykes, 
" in my morning walk, I observed more than a 
score of little heaps of grass seeds (Panicum) in 
several places, on uncultivated land near the 
parade ground [at Poonah ;] each heap contained 
about a handful. On examination, I found they 
were raised by a species of ant, [Atta providens,] 
hundreds of which were employed in bringing up 
the seeds to the surface, from a store below : the 
grain had probably got wet at the setting in of 
the monsoon, and the ants had taken advantage 
of the first sunny day, to bring it up to dry- 
The store must have been laid up from the time 
of the ripening of the grass seeds in January and 
February." * 

3. This leads us to mention another Bible- 
help, which we think you will find very valuable. 
Would it not be good for every one to keep for 
himself, a little store-house of Bible-illustration ? 
Every book that elucidates Scripture is useful ; 
but to each person the most serviceable of all 
commentaries would be one of his own compil- 
ing. Were any one to get an interleaved Bible, 
or still better, perhaps, a blank-paper book ; and 
whenever, in reading a theological treatise, or a 
work of Eastern travel, or in listening to a ser- 
mon, he found a dark saying expounded, or a 

* Entomological Transactions, vol. i., p. 103. 



Hints to the Bible Student. 1 5 5 

trite saying happily applied, he treasured it up ; 
his casket would soon fill with pearls of great 
price. Even although, as is usually the fate ot 
such experiments, — even although the record 
were imperfectly kept up, its value would be 
unspeakable. Every text thus illustrated be- 
comes in its turn an illustration ; not only an 
enlightened surface, but a luminous source, — a 
torch to a hundred parallels, — a candle to all the 
• context. And although you never made more 
than a few dozen entries in such a book, they 
would shed more meaning over the Bible than 
days of careless and cursory perusal ; and when 
you had nearly forgotten all other books and 
sermons, the biographical incidents, the theolo- 
gical elucidations, the illustrative maxims and 
memorabilia, which you had thus garnered up, 
would survive, as interesting and instructive as 
ever. 

4. The Bible, as we have already had occa- 
sion to mention, is, in one aspect, a book, and 
in another aspect, a library. It has both unity 
and variety. It is all alike the Word of God, 
and yet it is really made up of six-and-sixty 
volumes. The bouquet is composed of many 
flowers, but all of them gathered in the con- 
servatory of Heaven. The bundle contains 
many spices, — aloes, myrrh, and cassia, as well 
as mint, and cummin, — proverbs as well as 
gospels, chronicles as well as psalms, — some of 



156 Hints to the Bible Student, 



them more exquisite, and some of them more 
homely, but all of them from God ; and all of 
them, in their collectiveness, profitable for doc- 
trine or reproof, for correction or instruction, 
and combining to furnish for every good work 
the man of God. And where there is such 
diversity, there will be corresponding affinities ; 
and without any disparagement to the rest, every 
reader will find a prevailing attraction to some 
given portion. The poet is the inheritor of na- 
ture. He enjoys it all, and he despises none of 
it ; but there is some form or presentation in 
which he specially delights. Crabbe loved the 
low sandy flats of the Suffolk coast, and Words- 
worth the hills of Cumberland. Davy forgot 
philosophy and became a little child among 
granite peaks, which spoke of his native Pen- 
zance ; and Scott declared that he should die 
if he did not' once-a-year inhale the heathen 
Each had his turn, and for every taste the Cre- 
ator had provided a counterpart. And so the 
believer inherits the Bible. The record of his 
Father's love is all his own. But though it is 
the same God who gives it all, and though it is 
the same Saviour whom it all reveals, there are 
diversities of tastes ; and to meet these tastes, 
there are diversities of adaptations. Leighton 
basks in the warm evening sunshine of Peter, 
and Luther grows electric with the yearning 
affection and evangelistic ardour of Paul With 



Hints to the Bible Student. 



157 



the Sermon on the Mount and the hortatory 
epistles for their topic, the English Reformers 
sought to foster in their hearers a practical 
piety ; whilst, coeval with the Ridleys and 
Latimers, the Donns and the Hammonds of 
England, the North gave birth to men like 
Knox, and Melville, and Bruce, — men who took 
their cue from the old Hebrew prophets, and 
their text from the Kings or the Judges, — a lion- 
bearding, image-breaking race, full of their own 
sublime purpose, which, out of a race of swords- 
men and robbers, sought to make a covenanted 
nation, — and in carrying that purpose as fear- 
less of man as they were faithful to their God, 
And so, it is not only possible, but we might 
almost say desirable, that each Bible-book had 
its own student, — one who found in it a special 
pleasure, and who round it as a nucleus aggre- 
gated materials from the rest. But it is still 
more needful alongside of any partial study like 
this, to secure a comprehensive knowledge of 
the Scriptures complete. No single book can 
make a Bible, just as no one truth can make a 
full revelation. It is, therefore, by comparing 
scripture with scripture, — by reading Hebrews 
in the light of Leviticus, — by supplementing 
Matthew's parables with John's conversations, 
—by comparing the justifying righteousness of 
Romans with the justifying faith of Galatians, 
and both together with the faith-justifying works 



158 Hints to the Bible Student. 

of James, that our creed will attain symmetry 
and system, and like an arch, which is not all 
pier or all key-stone, but which consists of many 
courses fitly framed together, our faith — self- 
consistent and self-sustaining — will not readily 
break down. The gospel, — the great faithful 
saying, is the key-stone ; but on that grand cen- 
tral truth,— the Cross of Christ, God Manifest, 
Love Incarnate, the Mediator at once human 
and Divine — on that great key-stone, from where 
Genesis opens to where the Apocalypse closes, 
every successive instalment has a purchase and 
puts forth a strengthening pressure. And if it 
add to your intelligence to know the special 
purport of every Bible-book ; if it be creditable 
and scholar-like to be able to tell, off-hand, how 
Second Samuel relates the reign of David, and 
how Second John is an apostolic counsel to a 
Christian Lady ; you will only attain a thorough 
Bible mastery, you will then only be mighty in 
the Scriptures, when you know their respective 
contributions to the cardinal Revelation, and 
can point out that testimony concerning Jesus, 
which is the essence of them all.* 

* Every book of the Bible has its own "bu den." It makes 
its specific addition to the aggregate Revelation. The reader 
could address himself to no more profitable inquiry than to 
ascertain the principal subjects and prevailing purport of each 
book, — in some cases, of each chapter or section ; and it would 
be a material aid to his understanding and memory if he could 
condense the result into a brief " running title." In the 



Hints to the Bible Student. 159 



5. Those who are acquainted with Greek or 
Hebrew, will naturally take the opportunity of 
reading the Scriptures in their original lan- 
guages. In that case, they will find no doctrine 
nor important fact with which our authorised 
version has not already brought them acquaint- 
ed ; but they may find many expressions, which, 
in the original, acquire new force or felicity. 
But a chief advantage of reading the Greek, 
or the Hebrew, is, that it keeps the mind alert, 
and necessitates a closer marking of words and 
phrases, than when running over the well-known 
verses of our English Bible. For the same 
reason you will often find it of service to read 
a foreign translation. In Luther's or De Wette's 
German Bible, in the French of Martini or De 
Sacy, in the Italian of Diodati, or the Dutch of 
the States-General or of Van der Palm, the 
occasional discrepancies and the curious idioms 
will keep your attention awake ; and, like a gem 

German Psalters, quaint and suggestive names are given to some 
of the psalms. For instance, the 101st is "David's Regenten- 
spiegel" "David's Mirror for Magistrates ; " the 119th, "Der 
Christen goldenes A B C," &c, " The Christian's Golden 
Alphabet." Thomas Brooke calls the eleventh chapter of 
Hebrews, "that little Book of Martyrs;" and " Sacred Idylls," 
is the name which Dr Goode has given to his version of 
Solomon's Song. The reader will have no difficulty in finding 
out " King David's Pastoral," and Messiah's " Epinikion, or 
Carmen triumphale ;" but every one may not have noticed 
that the New Testament contains two Epistles to the Ephesians 
and two to the Hebrews. 



160 Hints to the Bible Student. 

in a fresh setting, like a picture in a new frame, 
you will be at once surprised and delighted by 
the novel aspect of familiar ideas. Or, as an 
edifying recreation, why might not a few friends 
compare, stanza by stanza, the Psalms, as they 
have been rendered by Watts, and Merrick, and 
Keble, and by the Scotch and English versionists ; 
or, as they have been done into Latin measure 
by Johnstone and Buchanan? Or, why might 
they not go over, verse by verse, a chapter of a 
Gospel, or of an Epistle, as given by Wiclif and 
Tyndale, and our other early translators,* noting, 
as they proceed, any seeming diversities or any 
peculiar and emphatic expressions ? 

6. In family worship it is usually best to read 
some book or the entire Bible right through, 
chapter by chapter ; but in his private study, 
every reader must adopt the plan which suits 
his turn of mind and his circumstances. A man 
of leisure may allot a large portion for his daily 
perusal ; and in his progress from book to book, 
he may avail himself of the commentator or 
critic who has done the most to expound it. 
And a man of little leisure, like the Shepherd of 
Salisbury Plain, may be glad to snatch for his 
morning meal, a promise or a proverb, — the 

* For this, every facility is afforded in Bagster's "English 
Hexap'a,'' — a work containing the English New Testament of 
Wiclif, Tyndale, and Cranmer, and the Genevan, Anglo- 
Rhemish, and Authorised Versions. 



Hints to the Bible Student. 161 

verse of a Psalm, or a sentence from a Gospel. 
But even the busiest man will find occasional 
opportunities for more extensive reading; and 
on some quiet evening, or in the seclusion of the 
Sabbath, you could not do better than sit down 
to the Bible, as you would to a theological trea- 
tise or a volume of Christian biography, with 
your mind made up to a deliberate and straight- 
• forward perusal. With this view you may select 
the history of Joseph or Samson, of David or 
Solomon ; the Journeys of the Israelites ; the 
Missionary Excursions of St Paul : or you may 
resolve to master a century of Hebrew History, 
connecting with the recorded events the contem- 
porary prophecies : or you may determine to 
read right through a Gospel Narrative, or the 
whole writings of some apostle, James, John, or 
Peter. And just as you find the charms of con- 
tinuity and completeness enhance all the other 
attractions of an ordinary book, — so, in perfect 
harmony with devout and reverential feelings, 
will the course of the narrative, the development 
of the leading idea, the progress of the argument, 
enlist your interest and quicken your perceptive 
powers. Indeed, there are many of the inspired 
writings with which it is hardly fair to deal 
otherwise. To take the analogus case, — when 
you have only a minute to spare, you may run 
your eye over a Hymn of Cowper,or a "Thought" 
of Pascal, and at once glean something mcmor- 

L 



J 62 Hints to the Bible Student. 

able; but you would hardly think it justice to 
a Sermon of Horsley, or a Biography of Walton, 
or a Drama of Racine, to read it at the rate of 
two pages a-day ; yet this is the treatment usually 
given to the kindred compositions contained in 
the Sacred Volume. No doubt, to keep pace 
with readers who "run," it has "words upon 
wheels;" and a Psalm, or a single apostolic 
exhortation, may supply to the man most hard- 
pressed and hurried, material for the day's medi- 
tation ; and we cannot be sufficiently thankful 
for such terse and portable sayings. But con- 
nected prophecies and lengthened narratives lose 
much of their impressiveness when split into 
isolated sections ; and, to say nothing of the 
every-day error which quotes the reasonings of 
Bildad and Zophar, as if they were no less 
authoritative than the Divine Arbiter's own 
deliverance — dissevered from that final deliver- 
ance, a drama, like Job, loses half its significance 
and all its unity. Read in this fragmentary 
fashion, the Epistle to the Hebrews has failed 
to disclose to many a Protestant the true theory 
)f Christian Sacerdotalism, and the Epistle to 
die Romans is obscure on the method of justi- 
fication. And, forbearing reference to the most 
sacred of all Biographies, were the reader trying 
the experiment on himself, he might possibly 
find that the journeys of Paul the apostle 
have not left on his mind an impression so 



Hints to the Bible Student. 163 

lucid as the career of Whitefleld or Eliot, and 
that his outline of Hebrew History is a sad 
contrast to his knowledge of his own country's 
annals. And yet, he has read the sacred records 
ten times as often as any uninspired historian. 
But — which sufficiently accounts for the differ- 
ence — the modern author was eagerly resumed 
night after night, till the perusal was ended : 
4 Samuel and Luke were meted out in daily tasks, 
and never read except in small disjointed frag- 
ments. 

7. Like other books, the charm of the Bible 
will very much depend on the frame of mind in 
which it is studied. To an earnest reader, it 
will always be interesting ; to a docile reader, it 
will always be new and surprising. If you 
intend to visit the lands where gold is gathered, 
you will peruse with avidity the publications 
which describe them, and which tell you what 
equipments to provide. Or if you are fond of 
some science, you will spend half the night 
devouring a treatise which expounds its prin- 
ciples, and you will feel richly rewarded in 
your fresh information or your new intellectual 
mastery. So was it with John Colby. As sgon 
as he learned to desire a better country, " God 
gave him a heart for the blessed Testament 
and nearly all the waking hours of his remaining 
three years were devoted to its study. If we, 
too, want "a religion good and strong, that will 



164 Hints to the Bible Student. 

keep by us and help us when we come to die ; " 
if conformity to God's will be the science on 
which we are most intent ; we shall need no 
inducement more powerful to draw us back to 
these Scriptures ever and anon. To an honest 
heart they never lack the zest of novelty ; nor 
so long as the mind is wakeful will there ever 
be an end of their wonders. When the Jews 
returned from Babylon, and were somewhat 
settled in their ancient city, the occasion was 
signalised by a great Scripture-reading. Assem- 
bling early, and commencing with prayer, the 
Governor and the Ministers occupying a plat- 
form in the midst, whilst a vast congregation 
thronged the square, one voice relieved another, 
till the sobs and bitter cries of the audience 
interrupted the speakers. The tale of God's 
mercies ; the recital of His good commandments, 
and the whole history of their nation's provoca- 
tions and perversity, had broken the heart of the 
people ; and though the rulers succeeded in still- 
ing their lamentations, no time was lost in carry- 
ing out one practical conclusion. " They found 
writtten in the law, that the children of Israel 
should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh 
month. So the people went forth and brought 
olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle 
branches, and palm branches, and branches of 
shady trees, and made themselves booths, every 
one upon the roof of his house, and in their 



Hints to the Bible Student. 165 

courts, and in the courts of the House of God, 
and sat under the booths ; for since the days of 
Joshua, unto that day, had not the children of 
Israel done so. And there was very great glad- 
ness." The perusal of the law had pointed out 
a neglected duty ; the heart of the people was 
soft ; it was the very season when the feast 
should be kept ; no time was lost : but as the 
people prepared themselves hastily to keep the 
commandment, so Jehovah blessed with His 
immediate smile, — "a great gladness," — the 
nation's new obedience. An enchanted scene it 
was in that clear autumn weather : every street 
arched over with its verdant trellis, and every 
flat roof a fragrant bower ; Jerusalem suddenly 
converted into a forest, and its new temple a 
mount waving with shrubbery and blazing with 
flowers : whilst, sweeter than the breath of the 
myrtle, rose the incense of praise and the swell 
of a sanctified patriotism. It was a week of wak- 
ing blessedness, — as if a segment of the heavenly 
Sabbath had dropped into the days of earth, 
and people wondered at their happiness. Yet, 
after all, they were only carrying out a command 
which had for ages existed in the Word of God ; 
with the existence of which some of them were 
doubtless acquainted long ago ; but which, had 
it not been for the propitious mood of that 
moment, might have remained a dead letter till 
Jerusalem was a second time destroyed. And 



]66 Hints to the Bible Student. 

even so, there may be both doctrines and duties 
still latent in Scripture, whose discovery only 
awaits our more docile perusal. And, like the 
Jews at the revival of the Feast of Tabernacles, 
when we comply with the neglected command, 
or credit the faithful saying, we shall experience 
" a great gladness,"— the joy which has already 
rewarded more teachable scholars, and which, 
with more candour, would sooner have greeted 
ourselves. 

Finally, prayer is a sure means of rendering the 
Word read both pleasant and profitable. There 
is a certain congeniality of mind essential to the 
enjoyment and right understanding of any book. 
A man of scientific exactitude will soon weary 
of a work of fancy, and a poet will soon lay 
aside a work of tame technicalities. And, 
looking to their external style, there are few 
minds so universal as to appreciate equally 
every sacred composition, historical, poetical 
argumentative, didactic ; and there has been 
much wresting of Scripture from forgetting this 
obvious distinction. Frigid critics have applied 
their micrometers to the imagery of Isaiah, and 
have subjected to logical severity the metaphors 
of Job ; just as some over-heated fancies have 
seen no end of mysteries in the books of Esther 
and Ezra. Happy is it for a Bible-book when it 
finds a like-minded interpreter, — when a poet, 
like Home, expatiates on the Psalms, and when 



Hints to the Bible Student. 



167 



a logician, like Haldane, expounds the Romans. 
But, apart from this outward form, — this human 
style, — historical, didactic, logical, poetic, — 
there is in it an inner, all-pervading style, — so 
to speak, God's own style, — a style of thought 
which is neither Hebrew nor Hellenistic — nay, 
nor even Human,— but aloof from all, and above 
them all,— a Heavenly style, — a tone of sanctity 
and benevolence and majesty, which makes this 
book as superhuman as it is all-adapted and all- 
blessing. To appreciate this, — to enter into 
this, the Divine mode of thinking and feeling, — 
it does not need that we become poets, reasoners, 
and sages ; — it does need, however, that we 
become worshippers. No man knoweth the 
things of a man, save the spirit of man that is 
in him ; even so, no one knoweth the things of 
God, save the Spirit of God : and to give us 
sympathy with God's own mind, to enable us to 
credit such love as is the love of God, and to 
give us relish for such holiness as is the very 
essence of the Godhead, as well as to make us 
cheerfully bow to the authority of the Great 
Speaker, we need to be taught by the Holy 
Spirit. That Spirit is promised to prayer. God 
will give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. 
And if, like John Colby, we cry to the Almighty, 
He will give us a heart for the blessed Testa- 
ment. If, like Ezra and his audience, our 
reading of the Law is prefaced by prayer, it will 



1 68 Hints to the Bible Student. 

be followed by repentance and reform. If, like 
David, we exclaim, " Open Thou mine eyes," we 
shall see wonders in God's Word. If, with Paul, 
we bow the knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, He will strengthen us by His Spirit in 
the inner man, and Christ believed will dwell in 
our hearts, and we shall be enabled, through 
the faith of love, to apprehend somewhat of that 
love of Christ which passeth knowledge. 



INDEX. 



Authors quoted are printed in Italics. 



Absalom, Death of, page 113. 

Affliction, Comfort in, 31. 

Al/ord, Dean, 82. 

Ant, The, 153. 

Apollo, The Belvidere, 140. 

Augusti?ie, 74. 

Bautaik, Professor, 15. 
Bible, the Word of God, 9- 

13 ; inspiration, 16, 124 ; 

ethical influence, 88-96 ; 

literary attractions, 98 ; 

spiritual efficacy, 129-132 ; 

boundless variety, 121 ; 

illuminated, 133 ; Natural 

History, 153 ; translations, 

159- , 

Bilney's Conversion, 135. 
Birks's " Horae Paulinae," 51. 
Biunt's "Veracity of Gospels/' 

Brougham, Lord, 144. 

Chesterfield, Earl of, 141. 

Christianity, Civilising Influ- 
ence of, 85 ; the great source 
of equity, 89 ; of compas- 
sion, 91 ; of truth, 93. 

Colby, John, 149. 

Columba, St, 81. 



Conder's Literary Historv 
of the JVezu Testament, 46. 
Cow/er, William, 136. 

Da Costa, 47. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 136. 
Equity, 89. 

Ethics, Christian, 89-96 
Evidence, Christian, 11, 40. 

Fltedner, Pastor, 92. 
Foster, John, 36, 107. 
Frauds, Pious, 93. 
French Prisoners in England, 8- 

Gaussen, 127. 

Geneva Students, 20. 

Gospel, Growth of, 72. 

Gospels, Genuineness and 
Authenticity of, 41:. 

Graham's, Mrs Isabella, Pro- 
vision for Last Journey, 36. 

Haldane, Robert, 20. 
Hilary, 74. 
Horace, 104. 

Illuminated Bible and Liv- 
ing Epistle, 133. 



170 



Index. 



Illustrations of Bible, 137. 
Inspiration, 16, 124. 
Iona, 80, 
lsocrates, 103. 

Job, Sublimity of, 107, 110. 
Johnson's Dying Advice to a 
Young man, 6. 

Knox, John, 36. 

Lawrence of Baschurch, 27. 
Leaven, 85. 

Literary Attractions of Bible, 
98. 

Lougfellozu, 23. 
Luther, 81. 

Matthew, Father, S3. 
M'Cheyne, 107. 
Medusa, or Sea-Nettle, 129. 
Memory, Texts Committed to, 
82. 

Milton's Inspiration, whence 

derived, 117. 
Moore s Epicurean, 32. 

Nasmith, David, 83 
Niebuhr, Blind, 37. 



Old age, 33. 
Originality, True, 139. 

Patterson, J. B., 13. 
" Physiopathy," 107. 
Pitcairn Island, 79. 
Pollok, 19, 118. 

Ragged Schools, 83. 
Romilly on the Refining In- 
fluence of Christianity, 115. 
Ruth, 112. 

Salmasius, 35. 
Simeon, Rev. C, 27. 
Stoneman, Harriet, 39. 

Tabernacles, The great 
Feast of, 165. 

Thunder-Storm described by- 
Psalmist, io5. 

Truth, 93. 

Walker's "Philosophy of the 

Plan of Salvation," 61. 
Wilberforce, W., 143. 

Zchokke, 15. 




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